Almurta’s last post

‘We will leave you here Almurta,’ said Leonie at the edge of the balcony jutting out from the House of Serpents. Her companions were already drifting silently back into the forest. A woman led Shadow and placed his bridle in Almurta’s hand. He hung back as if reluctant to join the crowd on the balcony.

‘The Feast of Serpents is about to commence,’ said Leonie. ‘You should hurry is you want a good viewing spot. I’ve heard it is well worth seeing.’

‘Why don’t you women stay then?’ asked Almurta.

Leonie shrugged. ‘We’re forest people, not party people,’ she said.

Almurta looked at the throng on the balcony and wondered if she could still remember how to be a party person. The flamboyant clothing of the party goers flashed in the sunlight as they gathered round a table laden with a sumptuous feast. Many had hung up their offerings of intricately decorated and inscribed prayer flags. Almurta’s hung there too, its glowing colours symbolising her prayer for healing. The image she had printed on it of a figure striding out joyfully seemed impossibly optimistic. Her journey across Lenore had been demanding and there had been times of deep self analysis. The Serpentine Road had extended her to the point of exhaustion. It had all been engrossing and she had learnt much but she was tired of travelling. Bone weary.

Before the women’s concert Almurta had spent days sitting with them at their camp beneath the trees. The gentle murmur of the voices had soothed her as the women spoke of their quests deep into the forest where they fought against ancient evils and dark forces. Although their battles were fierce and terrifying the women spoke of their victories with humility. Their failures they listed with honesty. The stories touched Almurta and resonated with her own. She felt a sense of belonging and her tiredness lifted.

The hubbub on the balcony called her back to the present. Snippets of clever repartee drifted across to her as more and more people joined the group. A sudden hush fell upon them as serpents slithered out of the forest and onto the banquet table. L’Enchanteur presided over the proceedings as the snakes ate and drank. ‘They are all great people,’ thought Almurta. ‘Gifted and talented every one of them. E is a remarkable woman. I’m just not sure I can keep up with them any more.’

As the snakes finished their meal and slipped back into the forest a sudden gust of wind swept across the balcony. Flags bumped against each other. The string supporting Almurta’s jerked and broke. The wind caught the cloth and lifted it above the trees. For a moment the light shone through the gauzy cloth and the figure upon it appeared to dance across the sky. As Almurta watched it hovered an instant and then was tossed higher and higher by the wind until it was no more than a smudge of colour. She glanced back at the forest to see Leonie disappearing among the trees.

‘Leonie,’ she called lightly as she tugged on Shadow’s bridle and ran after the woman. ‘Leonie can I come with you.’

The woman turned and smiled. ‘Of course,’ she said.

Almurta’s prayer flag

SKINNED

Almurta approached the House of Serpents on foot. Beside her walked Leonie, the woman who had come to her aid at the cave of the undead. Around them strode other women of her tribe. All were bare breasted and many had one or both breasts removed. They wore their scars with impunity. ‘We are survivors,’ they said. Behind them trailed the donkey pack, Shadow among them. He seemed happy to be with others of his kind and a lopsided donkey grin was slathered all over his face.

The music Almurta had heard the women playing the night before still echoed in her mind. Just after sunset the women had taken her to a natural amphitheatre deep in the forest. Cushions and rugs were strewn over a section of the embankment. Many of the women carried music instruments and took positions to the front of the seating area. Almurta took her place with the women towards the rear who reclined back on the cushions and soft grassy slopes.

On the far side of the amphitheatre a white water river cascaded down in a rush of sound. As darkness fell a woman plucked her guitar strings. One by one other instruments joined in until the space was filled with music that meshed and merged with the sound of falling water. Horns gave forth plaintive wails that were answered by long chords from electronic organs. The wafting notes of a flute seemed to dance and skip across the top of the wall of sound.

Far above stars glittered like ice crystals in the velvet black sky. The night was warm and Almurta felt cocooned within the soundscape. As the music soared then fell to hush then soared again she was swept up by it and carried to a place beyond words, beyond thought. The sounds seemed to flow into her body and reach down into her to touch her being on a cellular level revitalizing her and washing away accumulated stresses. For an unaccountable length of time she became pure sound.

After midnight the moon rose. The women ceased their playing and returned to their camp. Almurta fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. She woke before dawn to the gentle sound of rain dripping melodically down the sides of her canvas tent. It seemed the perfect ending to a magical night.

Now as the women walked the world had a washed clean look, a sparkling freshness. Some way in front of them a building seemed to shimmer in the light as if it was partly constructed from air. ‘The House of Serpents,’ said Leonie. ‘You will be required to make an offering before you can be admitted.’

‘Another one!’ Almurta muttered to herself. ‘I’m running out of ideas.’ Leonie ignored her and led the way through a series of white stone archways to an open balcony. Thousands of silvery snake skins hung across the intervening spaces rustling faintly in the breeze. The shed skins were almost translucent and tissue paper thin. They had an opalescent sheen that shimmered in the light. Almurta was transfixed by them.

‘I feel I have shed a layer of skin since I came to Lemuria,’ she thought. ‘It is as if I have been stripped of some outer membrane that I had developed in order to cope with the demands of life in the world beyond these shores; that world which places so much emphasis on outer successes while neglecting to nurture the inner being. The experiences I’ve had since coming here have stripped much of that outer skin from me. I feel less worldly now yet more open to life.’

A tall elegant woman came toward her. ‘Welcome to the House of Serpents,’ she said in an imperious tone. ‘What offering do you make?’

‘I offer you layer of skin,’ said Almurta without hesitation.

Almurta gets wild

Shadow had been his most taciturn self all day. Almurta kept trying to draw him into conversation but he only grunted in reply. For some hours she had been watching a storm draw ever closer. ‘I think we should stop,’ she kept saying. Almost pleading really. The clouds broiling in from the horizon were a dark greenish grey. Lightening bolts pierced the gloom and the sound of thunder rolled almost continuously. Shadow trotted on and on towards it. His ears were flattened back against his head and his neck was arched in stubborn defiance to Almurta’s urging. As they journeyed they passed several brightly lit Inns. The sound of hearty laughter and voices raised in song drifted to them from open doorways. ‘Look Shadow,’ Almurta would say as he trotted past them. ‘We could stay there until the storm blows out.’ The animal appeared not to hear her.

Signs of habitation were becoming further and further apart as the storm advanced towards them. The Serpentine Road wound this way and that through dense thickets of trees until a broad curve bought the pair out onto an exposed stretch of road that snaked around cliff tops. In other circumstances the view would have been breath taking. Glossy black rocks fell away steeply to the sea. Waves crashed at their base sending up clouds of salt spray. The wind picked up the spray and hurled it at Almurta making her eyes sting. Huge cloud banks towered up over a churning leaden grey sea were illuminated every few seconds by flashes of sheet lightening. Almurta clung onto Shadow’s bridle and clamped her legs firmly against his flanks. ‘We should turn back,’ she yelled to the donkey but her words were whipped away by the wind and the animal charged on.

As they neared the cliff tops the wind increased in ferocity. It shrieked as the full intensity of the storm was suddenly upon them. Pieces of debris went flying past. Instinctively Almurta raised one arm across her face and shut her eyes. The shrieking increased and she felt the brush of wings across her arm. Talons raked across her flesh. She opened her eyes and stared into a pair of wild dark eyes in a contorted female face. Below the face was the body of a bird. The creature gave a harsh cry of rage. Black wings beat the air and it flew off to join others of its kind sweeping in from the sea.

‘What are they?’ Almurta’s heart pounded.

‘Harpies,’ said Shadow. ‘Ancient harbingers of the storm. We are deep in Lemuria now and are travelling through mythic territory. We must take shelter from this storm.’

‘I’ve been saying that,’ said Almurta but the animal ignored her. He increased his pace and galloped in an ungainly way towards the dark wooded hills that lay just inland from their present position. Lightening rent the sky then a clap of thunder boomed so loudly Almurta felt her ear drums might burst. Heavy drenching rain commenced and visibility was reduced to a few metres. Almurta leant close over Shadow’s back praying they would find shelter soon. The rain was icy and she began to shiver uncontrollably.

Just when she thought she could hang on no more Shadow entered a dimly lit cavern. The rain ceased, the wind dropped away and for the first time that day Almurta felt safe. She slipped from Shadow’s back and hunted through the saddle bags for a towel and dry clothing. The wound inflicted by the harpy stung with a vicious stabbing pain. “Ow, that hurts,” Almurta said without realising she had spoken aloud.

‘Does it?’ said Shadow with sudden interest. ‘That’s not a good a sign. I wonder just what kind of cave we have found.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Those kind of wounds only hurt when there is evil around. It means we are danger.’ Just as Shadow spoke the cavern was illuminated by lightening. The walls of their shelter were exposed. Strange beings huddled together in the dim recesses stared out at them with dead eyes.

‘Just as I suspected. Zombies,’ said Shadow. ‘The undead. The heat of our bodies will invigorate them. You must be on your guard Almurta. They will try to steal your life energy. Don’t let them touch you.’

Almurta backed up against the animal. With each flash of lightening she was able to discern more of their strange companions. The bodies were swathed in grey garments that hung about them like fog so that their forms remained indistinct. Long thin necks supported ghoulish heads where eyes in sunken sockets glowered. With each burst of lightening they appeared to have inched closer.

‘They’re waking up,’ Shadow said, somewhat unnecessarily Almurta thought. He seemed to be getting perverse pleasure out of the experience. She could not shake the feeling that he had bought her here on purpose just to see what she would do. The shivering induced by the rain gave way to a shivering induced by fear. The gaunt faces surrounding her had a gothic quality that seemed to paralyse her thoughts. The storm outside raged unabated. The fear she felt was primal and beyond the reach of her conscious mind.

‘This is what happens when you travel with your Shadow,’ the donkey said, his voice sombre. ‘You get to see your own dark side. Your fears and weaknesses.’

‘Thanks a lot,’ said Almurta. ‘I knew you were on a mission today. So now what do you expect me to do? These creatures are creeping up on us really fast.’ The wound on her arm throbbed and she gave a small scream of fear as lightening revealed a zombie a few metres away. It would be upon her in minutes.

‘What you do is entirely up to you,’ said Shadow. ‘You can huddle in fear and let the creatures overtake you or you can find something inside yourself that will lead you to safety.’

Suddenly Almurta was angry. She was angry with the donkey for leading her into danger, angry with the zombies themselves for their fearful attributes and angry with something far beyond the immediate situation. It was as if all the societal pressure she felt to be nice, to accommodate the unpleasant behaviours of others, to always, like so many women, apologise even when she knew she’d done nothing wrong, boiled up into a rage of colossal proportions. ‘I’m not going to put up with all this freaking rubbish any longer,’ she shouted. Her voice reverberated off the cavern walls and boomed across the space. The next bolt of lightening revealed that the creatures had fallen back slightly. Almurta took advantage of the momentary respite. She reached into the saddle bag and grabbed the first thing that came to hand. A long sleeved T shirt. She twisted the garment into a rope like shape and then knotted the ends of sleeves into a large ball. Holding it with both hands she swung it wildly in front of her as she backed towards the cavern entrance. It wasn’t much of a weapon but it would hold the creatures at bay.

‘I’m leaving,’ she yelled at Shadow. ‘I really don’t care what you do you. I’m getting out of here.’ The anger surged through her body giving her an adrenaline rush of energy. She was wild with it.

Shadow gave a loud hee-haw. ‘Good for you,’ he brayed. ‘That’s exactly what I’d hoped you do. Jump on my back and I’ll take you to safety.’

‘You said that before and you carried me here. I think I’d be better off alone.’

‘He won’t betray you again,’ said a voice from the entrance. ‘You have passed the test.’

Almurta glanced behind her. A strapping bare chested woman carrying a burning torch stood silhouetted in the entrance. The light caused the zombies to fall back even further. ‘Come,’ she said. ‘I am one of the guardians of the Serpentine Road. I will take you to our camp where you can wait out the storm in safety. Shadow will follow behind you.’

Almurta finds her wild side

ALMURTA’S SOLE

Down the Serpentine Road Almurta wound with Shadow. Just how many twists and turns they’d rambled round she couldn’t say. The road had a sameness to it that dulled the senses. ‘There is a woman I want you to meet,’ Shadow said jolting Almurta out of the stupor she had fallen into. ‘She is the guardian of the House of Soles.’

Almurta had a vision of a macabre haunt where disembodied souls wafted about in ethereal plumes of smoke. ‘I’d rather not go there,’ she said.

‘E had suggested all you travellers visit the place,’ Shadow replied in a tone that suggested there was no point in arguing.

Almurta slipped back into her daze. Although she had metaphorically surrendered her worries about the future at the Serpentine Road portal she was finding it hard to divest herself of them entirely. She had woken that morning aching and dizzy. Her thoughts were clouded and she knew the malaise that ailed her had flared again. It was all she could do to clutch at Shadow’s bridle and remain upright in the saddle. When the donkey stopped suddenly she lurched forward and only just saved herself from falling headlong into a woman that sat in a tree directly in front of her.

‘Ah, a visitor,’ said the woman. ‘Welcome to my abode. You are free to wander at will. All I ask is that you leave your sole.’

‘My soul,’ cried Almurta in alarm. ‘What kind of Faustian bargain centre is this?’

‘S.O.L.E.’ the woman enunciated with a disparaging shrug. ‘What would I want with your soul, you fool? It’s an imprint of the sole of your foot that I desire. I ask that you inscribe upon it a record of where you left your footprints before and where you plan to leave them in future.’

Almurta slumped down in the saddle ‘Where I have left my footprints,’ she groaned. ‘What is this Lenorian fixation of looking at the past?’ She paused in thought. ‘As to where I plan to leave my footprints in future, well I haven’t got a clue. I’ve no idea where I’m heading. That’s why I’m taking this journey. To try and figure that out.’ Her face was red and she wondered for a moment if she was about to throw up.

‘Exactly,’ said the woman in the tree. ‘If you can’t say where you have been how will you know where you are going?’

‘I don’t think this is a good idea,’ Almurta whispered to Shadow. ‘I feel sick.’

‘Just go with it,’ Shadow advised in an undertone. ‘It will all work out if you don’t resist the experience.’

Almurta sighed and tried to think of places where she left her footprints. She had left her genetic footprint on her children, the physical imprint of her foot upon the earth, her energy footprint on the environment (though she was trying to lighten that one). No doubt her stumbling through life had left its mark on others, its footprint, just as others had left their mark on her. Sometimes a gentle touch, sometimes a clumsy bruising foot fall. She slid down from Shadow’s back and made an imprint of her bare foot in the modelling clay the woman indicated. Taking up a stick she then made a tracery of footprints she had left in life on the indented clay.

‘I still have no clear idea of where I’m going,’ she said to the woman when she had finished. ‘I would like to travel a path that utilises my creative potential, I would like to walk closer to my innermost self yet I do not know how to map the way to these things.’

‘As the ancient Chinese said, the longest journey starts with a single step,’ Shadow said with a know-it-all air of complacency.

‘Yes but you have to know which way to step,’ Almurta retorted.

‘You’re over thinking it,’ said the woman in the tree. ‘Just state those things you listed as your intentions every time you feel lost and you will find your way to them.’

‘I don’t think it’s a simple as that,’ said Almurta. ‘I think I have to set concrete goals. I definitely need a plan.’

‘Perhaps you do, perhaps you don’t. These things can be as simple or as complicated as you chose to make them.’ The woman gave an enigmatic smile and began to disappear in the manner of the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland. Her smile lingered the longest.

‘Well I guess that’s it,’ said Shadow when the smile had disappeared.

The woman’s words however remained as the footprint of an idea lodged in Almurta’s mind. ‘Perhaps it is as simple as stating my intentions,’ she mused as she mounted Shadow and they continued on their way.

Almurta’s surrender box

With a sinking feeling Almurta read the sign asking all comers to make a surrender box and shed something they carried before entering the Serpentine Road.

‘It’s not too late to go back to the ship,’ said Shadow as if sensing her hesitation.

Almurta nodded. It was an attractive option. She was tired and this trek was demanding things of her that she struggled to give. Still the rewards were already apparent. Re-discovering the child-like joy of pure creative expression had revitalized her. Burying past traumas had been liberating.

‘I don’t know what to shed,’ she confessed to Shadow. ‘I need to think it through.’

Shadow turned away from the main road and led her down a dusty track. They wound their way to a marshy stretch of brown water. Reeds clustered at the banks and ducks quacked in alarm at their approach. A solitary grey heron surveyed them then flew with languid grace to a more secluded spot. Once there it posed elegantly on one delicate leg. The aura of self contained alertness that surrounded it fascinated Almurta. Momentarily, the churning anxieties that boiled inside her were stilled and for a brief interlude she experienced the essence of her own nature as being similar to that of the heron’s. The stress and anxiety she carried were worldly overlays that obscured her true nature from her conscious awareness. She exhaled deeply and squatted down to observe the bird more carefully.

‘It’s one of your totems,’ Shadow told her.

The aspect of the bird’s nature that most intrigued Almurta was its stillness. Something about its stance suggested complete autonomy as if it did not suffer for company and was content in its solitude. ‘If only I’d found that within myself before I went to tent city this morning,’ she thought ruefully. ‘I would have saved myself the mortification of that scene with Ramon and Kryst.’

Earlier that day she had rushed up to the coffee shop in the tent city looking for the pair. Halfway through her latte they had appeared and the three of them had laughed and chatted together. It was only when she’d asked them if they wanted to accompany her to Rainbow Beach that the atmosphere had changed. ‘I have to get back to university,’ Raman had stuttered. ‘The semester break is nearly over.’ His face was flushed and his urbane manners faltered. A gauche youthfulness was revealed. The poor boy thinks I’m after him, Almurta realised, her eyes widening in alarm.

Kryst’s response had been more flirtatious. ‘I’m a married man Almurta,’ he had said with a coy grin. ‘I’ve got a wife and kids back home.’ Almurta had cringed. As had happened to her many times before, her overtures of friendship had been misunderstood. She could not imagine two men she felt less sexually attracted than Ramon and Kryst yet here they were acting as if she was coming on to them. She’d gulped the remains of her coffee and left, the friendship in tatters.

Perhaps that’s what I need to shed, she thought as she squatted uncomfortably at the water’s edge. She was not quite sure just what it was she was referring to. The desire for friendship? That didn’t seem right. Friendship was one of life’s joys. For once Shadow was silent as Almurta argued with herself. Her anxieties returned and the Lenorian landscape blurred in front of her. Concerns that occupied her thoughts in the world beyond Lemurian shores crowded in upon her. He body ached and the fear that her health would deteriorate further surfaced. It sat alongside her worries about her financial future and her dwindling employment options. Fears about finding a good place to live nagged in the background. Her stomach churned. She felt sick and stuck. There seemed to be no way out of the concerns that weighed her down.

‘This is ridiculous,’ she muttered. ‘What am I doing here staring at herons, frightening young boys and talking to donkeys? I should be home doing the dishes. Paying the bills. Working. I’ll never get on top of things living in this fantasy land.’ Almurta leapt to her feet and strode back up the track.

Shadow ambled after her and nudged her shoulder.‘Going home?’ he asked.

The heron, disturbed by the flurry of activity, took off and flew overhead with broad sweeping thrusts of its wings. The ducks quacked noisily. Almurta followed the heron with her eyes. The soft grey plumage was a subtle deep note in the pinkish light of the westering sky as the day faded to a gentle evening. A breeze sprung up and danced through the reeds with a whispering hush. ‘I’m just not ready to go home,’ she thought.

‘There is an inn where we can spend the night just the other side of the portal to the Serpentine Road,’ Shadow said right on cue.

‘I’ll shed my anxieties about the future,’ Almurta said with sudden decisiveness. ‘I’ll leave them behind and see what happens if I don’t worry so much.’ She felt both frightened and exhilarated by the thought. She had worn her anxieties like an overcoat. Without them she would be lighter but, in a way, she would also be more open, more vulnerable.

Burying the Past

Since she’d visited the shaman Almurta had felt like she was floating. She could not quite connect with the world around her. It was lucky the cups and bowls she’d found in Shadow’s saddle bags were metal for she surely would have broken ceramic ones. Cups slipped through her fingers and bowls slid out of her hands. Worst than that was the fact she was constantly stubbing her toes and walking into tent poles.

‘Stamp your feet,’ Kryst had commanded her repeatedly after they’d visited the shaman. Almurta had done so but it made no difference. She was still in the same state when she woke the next morning.

‘You need to make up your mind just which reality you are in,’ Shadow had growled when she’d stumbled against his flank and nearly toppled the pair of them. ‘Make up you mind,’ he commanded again. ‘Are you walking the dream world or have you returned to the physical? If you are drawn to the dream world you must enter it fully until you discover what it is trying to tell you.’

At his words Almurta had retreated. She was exhausted and dreaming seemed the best option. Sleep evaded her however as she tossed around under the covers. Her body ached and she felt incapable of organising her muscles enough to stand up. For hours she lingered in some netherland where she relived traumas from her youth and experienced afresh how those same hurts were replaying in her life currently. Beyond Lemurian shores her brothers and sisters were even now fighting over who should inherit what from the family home. Accusations and counter-accusations flew as all the while their demented father hurled obscenities from his bed in the nursing home. It was all so sordid and Almurta was tired of the whole tawdry mess.

‘You need to cast off these burdens,’ Shadow said hanging his long head in through the tent flap. ‘Do something that releases the issues from your mind. Make a symbolic gesture. Write letters to the people concerned and burn them. Write it down in your journal and bury the words in layers paint. Make art about it. It doesn’t matter what you do. The important thing is the gesture. Do something to release those things from you mind. You don’t need to carry them around any more.’

‘You!’ screamed Almurta. The animal was giving her the creeps. ‘Can you read my mind or something?’

‘Pretty much,’ said Shadow. ‘I pick up on the emotional states that are a result of deeper inner turmoil. I am called Shadow after all. I’m the voice of your unconscious.’

‘That’s all I need,’ fumed Almurta. ‘Not only do I have to put with a talking donkey, I get one that lives inside my head.’

‘Nicely put,’ said Shadow. ‘That’s precisely what’s happening.’

Almurta shrugged off the covers and flounced out the tent. Shadow tailed her.

It was noon time and the hot desert sun beat down relentlessly. Across the valley floor whitened bones cast stark black shadows on the dun coloured earth. The stark landscape was strangely beautiful. It was as if all the dross of life, the detritus and the superficial, had all burned away in that dry heat and left only the bare bones, the outlines of forms that once lived and breathed but now subsided back into the earth. Almurta could not imagine a more fitting setting in which to bury the ghosts of old traumas. She returned to her campsite, took up pen and paper. ‘I will write it all of me,’ she told Shadow.

She tried. She really did. She tried journaling her experiences but quickly realised she was incapable of writing anything of any depth. She just could not bring herself to write specific details of any of it – it was all too painful and she’d been over it a thousand billion times before or so it felt. She needed to distance herself from it, not dwell on it. She tried letter writing but it was equally unsuccessful. Whenever she commence a letter to any one of the people involved she seemed to regress back to childhood. Her handwriting changed and became a scrawl. Her language skills deteriorated and she wrote hate letters that might have been composed by a ten year old. The process served to release some of the surface tension but that was all.

‘I can’t do this,’ she said to Shadow as she ripped the pages she’d written into tiny fragments.

‘Some people can’t,’ he said. ‘It’s an exercise, that’s all. It doesn’t work for everyone.’

‘Maybe I could make art about it,’ said Almurta. ‘I could make paintings that looked like graffiti covered walls. I could write stuff down then bury it in paint.’

‘If you want,’ said Shadow, his voice cool and detached.

Almurta fiddled about with her paints. She built up layers, scratched back into them, spread more paint on top. The process was engrossing at first but quickly became something else as she attempted to manipulate her activity into something aesthetic, to make it ‘a work of art’. She sat back and ripped her efforts into small pieces too.

Across the valley passengers from the Vulcania were getting more and more entrenched as they excavated burial mounds. As Almurta watched the bones of ancestors were being exposed and long buried pasts were being revealed. Ancestral beings that had been lost were finally being acknowledged and laid to rest. Other passengers were packing up and preparing to leave on the next leg of the journey to Rainbow Beach. ‘We are taking the Serpentine Road,’ one told her as she assembled her entourage of donkeys, wagons, assorted familiars, hangers-on and travelling companions. They were a noisy, rambunctious bunch. Wild hoots of laughter and bawdy jokes drifted across to Almurta as they departed. She gazed after them half wishing she was part of the group. The piles of paper at her feet fluttered in the breeze and threatened to blow across the valley. It was not stuff she wanted others to read. Hastily she gathered it all together and buried it in a shallow sandy grave. To secure it all she placed stones on the earth. The structure grew and became cairn like and monumental. Shadow snorted in approval as Almurta stepped back and surveyed her work. In placing the stones she had somehow externalised the issues that had been preoccupying her.

‘I guess that’s it,’ she said to Shadow. ‘Now it feels like time to move on. Maybe I could ask Ramon and Kryst if they want to come with us.’ Seeing the woman with her procession of followers had made her wish for company.

FIRE BEINGS

For over an hour Almurta had trailed after Ramon and Kryst as they climbed the rocky slopes behind the Valley of Bones. The pair kept up a swift pace and Almurta had climbed on Shadow’s back some time ago. The donkey had insisted on accompanying her when she went to keep her rendezvous with Ramon. Although she would have preferred to be alone she agreed. The donkey was proving to be a knowledgeable companion and the campsite he had taken her to that morning was far more pleasant than the dank and smelly hole she’d selected herself.

As Shadow picked his way carefully up the slope Almurta clutched his mane with one hand. In the other she held the bags of foodstuffs Ramon had told her to buy for the shaman. The noise of tent city and her fellow travellers had long since fallen away and the four of them were surrounded by a silence that was broken only by the faint hush of a breeze whispering through tufts yellowed grasses. Kryst had taken the lead early on and now led them deep into the rugged, tumbling hills behind the Valley. He bent low to the ground as he climbed and his faded brown clothing toned in perfectly with his surroundings. His gnomic face gave him an earthy appearance. Behind him Ramon strode, dapper and proud in his freshly ironed slacks and his casual, but obviously expensive polo shirt. Shadow‘s ears were alert and his eyes gleamed soft and dark. Almurta, as she rode on his back, felt herself to be cast as an unlikely heroine in some fantasy movie. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders and a smile played across her lips.

‘It’s not far now,’ Kryst announced as he veered off the main path and down a narrow, twisting trail. Large boulders taller than a man edged the way. As they rounded the largest one a deep recess in the rock wall revealed itself. A robed man standing in front of it gazed at them as they approached. Almurta shivered with something that could have been excitement or could have been trepidation. The man seemed shrouded in an air of mystery and reserve.

Kryst greeted him and explained why they were there. Without speaking the man ushered them into a dimly lit cavern. A small brush wood fire burned in the centre and a plume of sage scented smoke escaped through a gap in the stone ceiling. Kryst bade Almurta sit on a woven rug beside the blaze then he and Ramon retreated to the perimeter of the room. Shadow remained outside, his large dark head peering in at them from the entrance.

The shaman picked up a large hoop drum and began to pound on it rhythmically. He danced around Almurta chanting in a language she did not know. ‘Eaho waeh, kea ee wah. Eaho waeh.’ The sounds seemed to come to her from an ancient past that wound back across the centuries for time out of mind. Sage smoke curled and swirled around her. In the flickering fire light she glimpsed spirit beings and she slipped into a timeless realm. She hovered there bodiless and calm until she heard Kryst’s voice calling her back.

She came to an awareness of herself seated on the rug. Ramon had moved beside her and held a water flask to her lips. Kryst and the shaman stood in the shadowy recesses at the back of the room. The shaman gave Kryst a small bag which he passed to Almurta.

‘That’s it,’ Ramon whispered in her ear. ‘Give him the food and we’ll get going. It’s a long way back to your camp.’

Feeling only half in the world Almurta ventured nearer the shaman and proffered the bags of food. The man gave her an eagle eyed stare than accepted the goods with a disarming grin. Almurta found herself smiling back at him and felt a surge of joy dance across her soul. ‘Thankyou,’ she murmured as Shadow whinnied behind her.

As they made their way down hill Kryst explained that the bag contained crystals that would help protect her and dried herbs that would increase her stamina. Ramon suggested she visualise a white bubble of energy around her that would shield from lesser energies. ‘It works for me,’ he said.

‘It will help dissipate the fears around you,’ Shadow said, his voice deep and solemn. He sounded as if he were speaking to them from the bottom of deep well.

Ramon and Kryst laughed. ‘You should lighten up,’ Ramon said. Shadow flicked his tail disdainfully at him and the four of them descended into the valley. There was some unspoken bound between them. Some sense that their time together was not yet over.

TROUBLE AT CAMP

Almurta stirred in her sleeping bag. The foul odour of something rotten filled her nostrils and she woke gasping for breath. Shadow thrust his head in the tent. ‘Glad to see you are finally waking up,’ he said.

‘Why, what time is it? Asked Almurta in alarm. Surely she had not overslept and missed her appointment with Ramon.

Shadow chuckled in a donkey-ish kind of way. ‘Not that kind of waking up. I meant you are finally becoming more aware. Waking up to yourself.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Almurta spluttered. ‘Are you saying I smell?’ She wished Shadow would go away so she could get dressed. Since Ramon’s warnings she’d been more tolerant of the donkey, he was only trying to protect her after all, but his dark presence still irritated her. No way was she going to get dressed in front of him. He was so into honesty she could see him telling her she was too fat. That she already knew and really didn’t need a donkey reminding her she’d been putting on the pounds lately.

‘It’s not you that smells,’ said Shadow ignoring her discomfort. ‘It’s where you chose to camp. It has been stinking since we got here but you’ve been too wrapped up in yourself to notice. Get dressed and I’ll show you.’

Shadow withdrew his head and Almurta scrambled to her feet. She still had no idea what he was talking about. It was true she had caught malodorous whiffs from time to time but this revolting stench was something new. She pulled on bits of clothing that were scattered around her tent. Since she’d arrived in Lemuria her clothing had been getting tattier and tattier. Her house keeping skills seemed to have diminished too. Yesterday standing beside Ramon she had felt decidedly down market, he was such a natty dresser. She searched for something classy to put on today but everything she possessed was crumpled, stained and torn. At least, she reasoned, she’d be better dressed than that weirdo Kryst. She had the distinct recollection he had been wearing and old brown cardigan buttoned in the wrong holes and pulled tight across his ample stomach.

Outside Shadow snorted impatiently. The stench was unbearable now and Almurta hurried out. ‘That’s the source of the odour,’ Shadow said nodding in the direction of a dirty brown stain that hovered in the air behind the tent. Almurta realised she’d been seeing it for days but had somehow been looking through it without really registering its presence. Overnight it had coalesced and thickened. As Almurta looked into the depths of it she saw the faint imprint of factories, smoke stacks, dredges and industrial equipment. The sun rising behind it was obscured and gave off a baleful orange glare.

‘What is it?’ Almurta pulled her coat around her. The air had a creeping, stinging coldness to it.

‘It is fear leaking through from your world,’ said Shadow. ‘It is so dense there now it is seeping through into Lemuria. Our Shamans are very concerned and hold cleansing ceremonies every day but it is so pervasive in your world they cannot clear it from here. It will not dissipate until you people change. This place is just one seep hole. There are many others.’ Almurta nodded. She thought of all the things people around her were afraid of – the global financial crisis, natural disasters, terrorism, global warming. The stench grew stronger still as she named them. ‘You were attracted to the stain,’ Shadow went on. ‘Although you couldn’t see it then or distinguish the smell you unconsciously recognised the energy as something familiar. That’s why you chose to camp here.’

‘It reminded me of home,’ Almurta said wryly.

‘Exactly.’

‘But why am I seeing and smelling it now?’

‘Because Ramon’s words resonated with something you instinctively know but have been ignoring. You have absorbed the fears from your world and, in many ways you embody them, yet there is a part of you that knows that while the things themselves are real, the fears are phantoms. They only have reality because you give it to them.’

Almurta struggled to understand. Shadow made a kind of sense but she couldn’t quite grasp it. ‘Um…I don’t get it,’ she mumbled in confusion.

‘‘Like I said, you are only just beginning to wake up.’ said Shadow. ‘Realising where you have camped is a start. Gather your belongings. I’ll take you to a better camp site. Somewhere with clean air. You’ll see things more clearly then. Ramon will help you further later on today.’

TENT CITY

The smell of baking enticed Almurta down to the encampment of traders that had sprung up near the valley’s entrance. Shadow had bellowed after her retreating figure demanding to tag along but she’d convinced she was only going to the camp and would soon return. ‘Okay then,’ he’d said mournfully, ‘I can’t stand the smell of meat cooking anyway.’ Sometimes she thought he was misnamed. He should have been called Ee-aw after the donkey in Winnie the Pooh, he was miserable enough. Other times he earned the named Shadow by tailing her everywhere. He rarely let her out his sight and it was relief to leave his hulking dark presence behind for a time.

Down at the tent city she followed her nose until she found a stall selling pastries. She made purchases then sat on a wooden form outside. All around a moving throng of people, animals and being that appeared only part human paraded before her. Some sure were elves and goblins, satyrs and centaurs.

A young man dressed in immaculately tailored slacks and shirt approached and asked if he may join her. He was, he explained, a native of Lenore that had journeyed to her world and desired to learn more of its customs. On learning she was Australian he expressed his bewilderment at Australian slang. He offered to be her guide to the tent city is she would ‘talk Australian’ as he put it. ‘No worries,’ said Almurta grinning. The scene before her was so bizarre she needed an interpreter.

The young man introduced himself as Ramon. He was the son of a Lenorian dignitary and attended a prestigious university in her world. His manners were charming and Almurta felt at ease in his presence. He ordered a coffee for the two of them and discussed the scene before them. While some traders and entertainers had arrived to provide services to the tourists from the cruise ship as he called her and her travel companions, the bulk were there because it was Holy Month. The Valley of Bones was a site sacred to religious folk of many creeds, philosophers and spiritual seekers. Once a year people would gather at the valley and involve themselves in rituals and ceremonies that recognised the place of death in life.

As Ramon spoke a man dressed only in a loin cloth and coated in a thick layer of grey ash wandered past. Almurta had been noticing men like him since she’d sat down and asked Ramon about them.

‘They are holy men,’ he replied. ‘They cover their bodies in ash from the cremation fires to the north of valley and meditate in caves around the valley’

The holy man bowed as he passed them. Behind him came a pageant like procession of mummers and people dressed ghoulish masks. Necklaces of miniature skeletons hung around their necks.

‘They are honouring the dead,’ Ramon explained. ‘Come on, let us follow them.’ He and Almurta trailed after the procession as it wound through a maze of alley ways between tents and stalls. The crowd entered a wide square surrounded by colourful stalls. Everywhere she looked Almurta could see brightly coloured objects being offered for sale. Gaudy painted papier mache models of coffins, skeletons and death masks were stacked high. Garlands constructed from tiny skulls carved from bone and decorated in flashy orange, blue and white paint swung from tent poles. The procession disbanded and the people milled about the stalls purchasing items. There was a macabre but carnival like atmosphere.

The plaintiff wail of trumpets and fierce drumming came from a side alley. Ramon urged Almurta towards it. They rounded a corner and came across a cavalcade of open vehicles carrying people dressed in white. An ornate coffin strewn with flowers was mounted on the first vehicle. The roar of motors and car horns mingled with the raucous din the people were making.

‘It’s a funeral procession,’ said Ramon. ‘The noise is to scare away evil spirits.’ The two of them hung back respectfully as the procession passed. The sounds died away and Almurta realised her ears were ringing from the noise as Ramon led her deeper into the tent city. The passed soothsayers and scribes, fortune tellers and astrologers. ‘Most are charlatans,’ said Ramon. ‘Some though are quite uncanny in their predictions.’

A gnomish man rushed up to Almurta. ‘Madam, madam,’ he cried. ‘I have been expecting. Come with me and I will divulge the secrets of your future.’

‘Oh come off it Kryzt. You had no more idea she’d be here than I did.” Ramon ushered Almurta past the man but he trotted after them.

‘Always the realist, aren’t you Ramon. A little bit of hocus pocus never hurt anyone,’ he said. ‘Besides I can tell from her aura that she really does need advice. For a start she needs to shield. She’s leaking psychic energy all over the place.’

‘That is true,’ said Ramon. ‘I’ve noticed that too.’ He turned to Almurta. ‘I hope you’ve got a good guide and protector in the Valley of Bones. You don’t want to be wandering around at night time like that. All kinds of weird entities and psychic vampires could latch onto you and drain your energy. Have you been feeling overly tired lately?’

Almurta admitted she had. ‘I told you she needed help,’ Kryzt muttered to Ramon. ‘Here take my card. Come back here tomorrow at noon and I’ll get the shaman to help you.’ He pressed a card into Almurta’s hand and backed off into the crowd giving her a serene smile. Almurta glanced at the card. ‘Kryst Zygstan – Seer and Soul Doctor. Scrying by appointment.’

‘He would be worth seeing,’ Ramon said as he hurried her on. ‘You really should get back to the valley before dusk and take shelter with that guide of yours,’ he said, his face etched with concern. ‘I’ll take you back to the edge of the encampment now.’

As he led her through the streets Ramon talked about the activities of scientists in her world. ‘I’ve heard they are moving closer and closer to isolating the factors that cause aging and the inevitable decay that leads to death. The more extreme say that they will eventually be able to eliminate death all together. What do you think of that? Would you have your genes manipulated so that you would never die of old age?’ He gave a mischievous smile.

A group of men and women in saffron robes and woven shawls emerged from a building directly in front of them and greeted the pair with beatific smiles. A sense of peace and good humour emanated from them. ‘Who are they?’ Almurta asked stalling for time. Ramon’s odd questions had disconcerted her.

Ramon glanced at the retreating backs. ‘Oh they’re healers and sages. They meditate on death every day.’

Almurta gazed after them. A woman apparently sensed her and turned and looked deep into her eyes. A sense of moons and planets swirling through the timeless realms of space momentarily engulfed Almurta. ‘They look they have found the secret of eternal life,’ she mumbled to Ramon.

Ramon giggled. ‘Perhaps they have,’ he said ‘but come on, tell me. Would you choose never to die of old age?’

Almurta stopped walking. Somehow she needed to be stationary to think of the answer. ‘No,’ she said finally. ‘I think death is part of life. Knowing life is finite gives it an edge. It motivates as you to do things not just think of them.’

Ramon’s smile broadened. ‘Good answer,’ he said as they reached the entrance to the valley. ‘I’ll meet you at the pastry stall tomorrow and take you to Kryzt.’