Older than the oldest story, a dream rode on the back of the wind, seeking a dreamer. Born in another land – in another time – the dream was in no hurry. It sought a dreamer who carried a particular mix of grief and longing, vulnerability and courage.
Millennia passed. The dream travelled from the Old World to the New, carrying an echo of magic and mystery.
#
In a city in the New World, a modern city with skyscrapers and suburbs, parks and jogging tracks, a man lay sleeping.
Jonathon Wiley, a self-declared agnostic, was not expecting dispensation or grace. Life had dealt with him harshly, and he took solace where he could. Sleep, he had found, was the greatest balm of all.
The Moon rose over the rooftops of the city, and the dream floated gently down into Jonathon’s sleep.
Jonathon stirred, throwing off the bedclothes. He called aloud for Sandra, and she disappeared around yet another corner . . .
. . . He found himself walking in a long, winding tunnel. It was so cold his breath hovered in puffs of cloud, and his testes retracted into the warmth of his body. Someone was playing music sweet enough to charm wild beasts, coax tress and rocks to dance, stop the flow of rivers.
Jonathon looked in wonder as a man appeared, playing a lyre. Behind him came a woman, dark and beautiful, achingly like his Sandra. The music faltered. The man turned, reaching for the woman.
Jonathon watched in horror as the woman began to fade, like an old photograph too long in the light. She stretched her hands towards the man, but a stronger force pulled her away, back to the place between the worlds. With a cry, the man threw himself after her. The lyre sang a single, mournful note as it fell.
Still caught in the dream, Jonathon wept. He cried for the man’s loss – and for his own – and for the music that had plucked at his heart with exquisite, unbearable longing. Most of all, he wept because the woman’s face had been Sandra’s, fine-boned like an angel’s.
The dream faded, and Jonathon stirred uneasily in his sleep, arms searching for something. His hands closed on emptiness.
A chant echoed across his garden. “Everything She touches changes. She changes everything She touches.”
The chanting reached into the treetops, disturbing the leafy play of possums, interrupting the dreamless sleep of doves.
“Everything She touches changes. She changes everything She touches.”
Women’s voices, strong and clear, filled the night, stealing into the quiet, well-appointed houses on Jonathon’s street.
Carried on the breeze, the chanting blew in through Jonathon’s window, pulling him all the way back from the in-between place where he was following Sandra’s long, black hair and gamine smile. He did not want to wake; awake, Sandra was dead.
He opened his eyes. It was still dark, although moonlight played across his face like warm fingers. Jonathon stood and moved to the window, unsure whether the voices were coming from outside, or were an echo of his dream.
There below, in the garden across the fence, black-robed figures walked slowly through the trees. Jonathon blinked and rubbed his eyes. The Moon shone full and bright on the black hoods covering the heads of the women below. Jonathon knew they were women because of their voices. He had no idea who they were, or who lived in the house nestled at the back of the huge garden next door.
He used to be curious about neighbours and other things, but that had been when Sandra was there. With a heavy sigh, Jonathon thought that Sandra would probably have befriended whoever lived in the old house and been down there howling at the Moon, or whatever the women were doing in the garden.
He opened the balcony door and stepped out into the night. Below him, the black-robed women entered a cleared space between the trees, forming a circle around a single candle in the centre. They faced outwards, towards the shadows of the trees.
Jonathon shivered, a prickling on his skin as if her were being watched. He stepped back inside, and reached for a blanket; it suddenly seemed important to cover his nakedness.
Below, the chanting stopped, leaving a resonance in the air. The night waited.
Jonathon, compelled by something he couldn’t quite name, walked downstairs and out the back door. Heat pulsed through his body, and he felt a stirring of arousal, the first in a long time. His head spun as if he had been drinking red wine all night, but he hadn’t touched alcohol since . . .
. . . “Slow down, Jon. It’s so wet!” Sandra’s voice was tight, a residue of their talk over dinner; a special dinner for their anniversary – expensive food, too much wine, and the inevitable conversation about children.
“Do you want to drive?” asked Jonathon through clenched teeth.
“I’m just asking you to be careful,” said Sandra in the reasonable way she spoke to toddlers, old people, and recalcitrant men.
“I’m always careful,” said Jonathon, as the car ahead began to slide across the road.
Jonathon braked. With a stomach-rolling lurch, their car skidded sideways, slipping and sliding on the wet road.
Hands locked on the steering wheel, Jonathon tried to manage the skid. Just when he thought he had it under control, the car jumped sideways and snaked towards a light pole. Sandra screamed.
Jonathon’s senses returned to a strange silence. For a moment he thought he was waking from a night of drinking and partying, but then he remembered. In the passenger seat, Sandra was very still.
As always, the flashback left Jonathon sweating and shaking. He forced himself to breathe and to open his eyes. He found himself half-way across the back yard clad only in a blanket.
“Bloody sleep walking now!” he muttered as he turned back towards the house.
Then the chanting started again. “Everything She touches changes. She changes everything She touches.”
Jonathon turned away from the house and crossed his garden to climb the huge, old acacia tree by the fence. The bark scratched his bare feet. The sleeping doves grumbled as he passed. The possums watched with round, liquid eyes as the man arrived to play his part in the ancient story of ecstasy, intoxication, and initiation.
Below, the women waited, still and silent. Jonathon reached a fork high up in the tree just as a small woman moved from the circle to stand before a bench at the edge of the clearing. She held her arms up to the sky, palms facing forward.
The Moon sailed behind clouds, deepening the shadows. The woman waited. The Moon emerged, illuminating the bench and the jars of feathers surrounding a single candle.
Jonathon watched as the ritual unfolded, his body shivering.
Moving gracefully, the woman struck a match and lit a taper candle. She called out, voice full and strong.
“Guardians of the East. Powers of air. We invoke you and call you! Golden Ones of the dawn. Winged Ones of the morning Sun. Whirlwind, Storm and gentle Breeze. Come! By the air that is our breath, be here now!”
Jonathon jumped. The hairs on his arms stood up. With a shudder, he remembered another dream, one that had haunted him since the accident.
He was following Sandra along a mountain path at sunset. Birds roosted in the trees, and a lone eagle circled in the air. Suddenly he heard the sound of feet running behind him, and women’s voices, shrieking and calling. He ran then, fleeing the women who were coming for him, calling his name. Strangely, Sandra seemed to have doubled back and be chasing him.
He had always been very glad to wake before the women caught him. Steadying himself against the tree trunk, Jonathon continued to observe the improbable ritual in the garden below.
Walking slowly towards where he perched in the tree, the woman stopped before another low table on which rested a china statue of a leopard and a larger, bronze statue of Hindu lovers, entwined like Jonathon had seen them on the temples in India. Again he felt the stirring of arousal.
The woman called again. “Hail! Guardians of the South. Powers of fire. We invoke and call you, Fiery Ones of the midday heat, Sun’s warmth, spark of life. Come, by Fire that is our spirit, be here now!”
Jonathon leaned forward to watch as the small woman moved away to the next position. On the ground was a large, wooden bowl, filled with water that caught the reflection of the Moon. Jonathon peered through the leaves.
The woman spoke. “Hail! Guardians of the west. Powers of water. We invoke you and call you. Flowing Ones of the Watery Depths, Twilight One, Evening Star. Come, by the living waters of life, be here now!”
The fourth altar, on the opposite side from Jonathon’s tree, was made of stones of all shapes and sizes, clear quartz and amethyst, river-washed pebbles. Fruit and flowers adorned the stones, and atop it all rested a statue of a woman, huge and round, breasts hanging to her belly.
Jonathon recognised the ancient image of the Great Mother; Sandra had worn one on a chain round her neck.
“To protect me,” she had said.
When Jonathon first saw it, he had suspected she might be using it as a talisman to conceive, and he had made it absolutely, perfectly clear that he was not ready to be a father.
But the Great Mother had not protected Sandra after all. Jonathon wondered, not for the first time, if it would have made a difference if he had said “yes” to having a baby. If they had been driving home that night in a warm glow of happy expectation, might he have turned the steering wheel differently? Might he have slowed down when Sandra asked? Would it have made a difference?
The woman’s voice called Jonathon back from his doubts.
“Hail! Guardians of the north. Powers of earth. We invoke and call you. Black Ones of the Midnight Hour, Stone, Mountain, Life-Giving Soil. Come, by Earth that is our strength, be here now!”
He watched as the women turned to the centre, as if moved by one will. The small woman moved to stand before a single candle on the ground.
“We are between the worlds, beyond the bounds of Time, where night and day, birth and death, joy and sorrow, meet as one.” She stooped to light the candle. “The fire is lit, the ritual has begun.”
The women began to move then, a slow, turning dance around the circle. One of them started to sing, and others joined in rounds, until their voices wove together into a force that pulled at Jonathon like an inexorable tide.
Over and over they sang, “Everything She touches changes. She changes everything She touches . . . Everything She touches changes. She changes everything She touches…”
They moved in circles and spirals, weaving a pattern so intricate Jonathon strained to trace the threads.
He climbed further out along the branch, lured by the magic of the words, by the circle, by the women twining and coiling like a Celtic knot. His head was full of light, and his body throbbed with life. He shed the blanket, and stepped into the moonlight . . .
The branch snapped with a sound like a gunshot. Jonathon’s last thought as he fell was that he was sorry the singing had stopped.
#
. . . “Slow down, Jon. It’s so wet!”
Jonathon heard the familiar words. Sandra’s voice was tight, but this time he noticed the light touch of her hand on his thigh.
“Do you want to drive?” he heard himself ask. This time he heard the fear in his own voice, like a child being asked too much. A kaleidoscope of memories turned slowly in his mind’s eye: lying awake in his cot at night, hearing his mother cry after the baby died; gritting his teeth and skiing down a too-steep slope to please his father; his first night at boarding school.
“I’m just asking you to be careful,” said Sandra, with another feather-light touch to let him know she forgave him.
“I’m always careful,” Jonathon heard himself say, as the car ahead began to slide across the road.
He relived the next moments, the moments when he’d not been careful enough, when hesitation had made the difference between life and death. Always before, this part of the accident flashed past in a catastrophe of adrenaline.
Now, time slowed, and Jonathon felt himself press his foot onto the brake, a gentle enough touch if the road were dry and the way ahead clear. He felt the lurch as the car skidded sideways, and then he felt himself release the accelerator and the brake, and disengage the clutch. All the right moves!
Then he turned the steering wheel away from the car in front, and counter-steered exactly as he should. The car stabilised; was it going to be all right this time? That was when the wildly-careening car ahead of them swung around and clipped their bumper bar.
It probably didn’t even leave a dent, but the bump was enough to send their car spinning out of control towards the pole with no time for anything at all.
#
Jonathon woke to quiet and lay with his eyes closed, wondering at the strange feeling in his body. Something was missing. It took him some time to realise that the bone-deep, gut-wrenching guilt was gone.
He opened his eyes. Sitting close, watching him, was a woman with soft, brown hair, and a smile on her lips.
“I cast a spell for someone with whom to share my life,” she said. “But I never expected a man to fall from the sky.”
Jonathon groaned and passed out again. When the ambulance arrived, they encased his broken arm in an inflatable brace and strapped him to a gurney. He drifted in and out of a dream in which he drifted slowly, from a great height, into the arms of a woman with soft hair and warm eyes.
He woke the second time to the antiseptic whiteness of a hospital room. Memory returned, and, with it, a rush of shame. What had he been doing naked in a tree, hanging over his neighbour’s yard?
That was the question the doctor asked, raising his eyebrows knowingly. Jonathon decided there was no point trying to explain the strangely compelling chanting, the sense of walking in a dream, the certainty of taking part in something profound. He shrugged at the doctor’s question and winced as hot pain lanced up his broken arm.
They sent him home the next day, once they had determined that his head was as normal as it had been before the fall. Clearly the story of his escapade had done the rounds of the hospital; smirking staff members nodded at him in the corridor, and even the accounts clerk struggled not to smile.
Jonathon nursed his bruises and his pride for a week before venturing around the block to visit his neighbour. She opened the door and frowned at him.
“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t recognise you with your clothes on. Come in! I’m Laura, by the way.”
Jonathon stammered his name and the apology he had prepared and stepped into a long hallway – wider than usual – lined with a collection of antique prints, carved masks, and artifacts that would have been at home in a museum.
“Indonesian ritual masks.” Jonathon peered closely at a pair of carved-bone masks.
“You know them?” asked Laura, lifting one down from the wall.
Jonathon nodded. “I was there with my wife.” Now it was possible to say it – ” . . . with my wife.”
“We went to a small island for a few days. Very remote, only surfers and a fishing village. One night we followed the locals to their temple. The music sounded like saucepan lids and cow bells. Then two women in masks started to dance, beautiful, synchronised movements.”
“Masks like this?” asked Laura, touching the solid wood covering the eyes of the mask.
Jonathon nodded again. “No eyes. The women were dancing in trance, perfectly coordinated for about twenty minutes. Amazing!”
Laura nodded. “I’ve heard of that, but I’ve never seen it. Makes you realise there’s more to the world than we’ve been taught in our civilised culture!”
They moved to the kitchen, and she made tea while they spoke of travel, civilisation, and interesting ritual practices. Finally Jonathon broached the events of the previous week.
“I didn’t mean to spy on you,” he said. “I was asleep, and next thing I knew I was in the tree. I don’t know how I ended up there naked. It’s not like anything I’ve ever done before.” He spoke the last words quickly, thinking it may be time to leave.
Laura smiled. “I know,” she said. “I really did cast a spell for a man to enter my life. I believe it worked.”
Jonathon opened and closed his mouth a few times, at a loss for words. He had seen amazing things on his trips: the unseeing dancers moving in perfect synchrony, people possessed by spirits convulsing on the ground, terrible wounds healed by magic. But he had always been the observer, the tourist recording the events on his camera.
“You don’t believe me?” asked Laura, smiling a secret smile that made Jonathon want to touch her lips.
“I think I do,” he said. “But it frightens me.” He thought of his dreams.
“That’s good,” said Laura. “Men should fear women’s magic. In the same way we once spoke of fearing God; love and awe together.”
Jonathon couldn’t help but smile. “And then what?”
“Then we could get on with the important things, like looking after the planet and cooperating instead of competing and killing each other.” Laura’s brown eyes sparkled with life.
“Sounds like a good plan,” said Jonathon, reaching out to hold her hand.
Meet Mago Contributor Kaalii Cargill