The Toltec Art of Life and Death. Barbara Emrys

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ he replied, laughing, and she saw him again within the tree that seemed to come and go, straddling another limb, his bare legs swinging as he waved to her. “Stay with me, Mamá.”

      His mother’s fear exploded into fury, and in that moment Miguel saw her transformed. The frail old woman who had come to him, wrapped in a shawl and shivering with cold, was an old woman no more. Before him, in the full sun of an eternal moment, stood a young and beautiful woman, naked but for the shawl that fell from her beautiful breasts and shoulders. She scowled at him, her hair caught in the wind that had risen in her anger. A fierce light shone over her, licking at her hair and skin like dragon fire.

      “You are mine!” she raged. “How dare you leave! How dare you!”

      “I haven’t left you, my beloved,” he replied gently, watching her with intense interest. “But the dream of Miguel is done. Game over.”

      “Not done! Not over!” she cried. “You can do much more—and you will do much more!” She turned her angry gaze toward the planet again, and pointed at the glittering lights. “Are you content to see your dream fade—here, right here before your eyes?”

      Miguel, recognizing this voice, answered with a smile. “You can’t move me, my love. My journey is endless, but my poor body won’t go another mile.”

      “The body will do as you say. It always has! Come away from this place and return to me . . . to us!” In the far distance rose the sounds of his family—brothers and sons, their wives and children—as they chanted in a circle, calling for his return to the physical world. He knew they meant to help. He knew they followed his mother’s will.

      “I cannot,” he said simply.

      “You are mine!” she shouted.

      “I never was.”

      Miguel looked into the eyes of his beloved and saw her beauty, her sorrow, and her worth. He heard the pleas of his mother, but could comprehend only the desperate cry of this one—who had been called many things in human storytelling. She represented humanity itself, a vibrant miracle trapped within its own spell. It was she who had lost the memory of paradise. It was she who had cast a shadow across sublime light. As he looked at her, remembering countless others who had said they loved him while they raged against themselves, his voice softened and he reached for her.

      “Your temptations are strong—stronger even than your need for me.” The touch of his hand on her bare arm cooled the fire in her eyes, and he began to see his mother, old again, and trembling from an unfelt chill. She gazed at him, her eyes softening, pleading.

      “Don’t worry yourself, Sarita,” he soothed. “I am everything now.”

      “And what of me?” she asked, sounding like a child as she shivered in her nightgown, looking at him with wide, fearful eyes. “Do not leave me,” she cried. “Do not abandon me to a world that does not include you.”

      “Miguel can’t return. He’s dead.”

      “The old ones sometimes brought the dead to life!” Her eyes flashed, and then she lowered her gaze self-consciously. “I will ask. They will know, m’ijo,” she muttered.

      “They would not bring back Miguel, your son, even if he agreed to it. He will be a spent dream, attempting to survive within a dying body.”

      “So . . . it might be done!” his mother exclaimed. The fire was in her eyes again and he felt the temptation that burned strong behind it.

      “Sarita, do not ask this.”

      “I will have you back! I will, or—”

      “Or what—or you’ll die? Do it now! Come home with me!”

      “I am not ready for this bleak surrender!”

      “Madre, you don’t listen.”

      “Come back, then, and make me hear you,” she cried. “Come back and teach me what I would not learn.”

      Miguel sighed. She was using words to bend him, as she always had. It had never been easy to win an argument with her. Sarita had been his teacher, his patient master, and it was hard for him now not to respond as a student. He leaned heavily against the trunk of the tree and turned his attention to the great, glittering sphere that floated above the horizon, welcoming certain dreams and abandoning others.

      “Your dream is fading already,” Sarita pressed on, following his gaze. “Such a tragedy. Your sons are not strong enough without you; your apprentices are weak and selfish.”

      “It doesn’t matter, Sarita. They are happier than they used to be. The world is happier.” He turned back to her with a look of contentment.

      “Who gave birth to you?” she snapped. “Who taught you, and trained you, and prepared you to seduce Mother Earth herself?”

      “Tu, Mamá,” he answered quietly. He knew what was coming. It would be hard to say no to her, as it had been hard to say no to the rest of her kind. She counted on that.

      “Obey your mother. Time is running out, and I will not return without you.”

      “And I ask you to join me, Sarita. There is nothing left for you but physical suffering. I would spare you that.”

      “Do not paint me as a victim!”

      Miguel regarded her thoughtfully. She was not a victim. She was a woman who abhorred the ravages of age and would not willingly face the end alone. They had collaborated for fifty years now, like two children inventing games—games, in this case, that changed the dreams of human beings. In his absence, there would be no one like her left in the world . . . but did she understand the price his body would pay to come back? Could she imagine the extent of his physical pain? Something stirred in him, and he felt the force of his love begin to shift the dream. He looked into his mother’s eyes and spoke to her, choosing his words carefully.

      “If this body lives, Madre, it will need my presence; but it will also need something of the old structure.”

      “Was it not I who taught you about the human form?”

      “There’s no form left—no belief system.”

      “Such things can be retrieved!”

      “Who was Miguel, Sarita? How can he be recovered, when there is no answer to that question? There are only memories to point the way. Memories lie, and the lies change with every telling. Memories may give direction, but never truth.”

      “They will give me you!”

      Miguel looked at his mother, a vision of shifting moods and remembered phrases. She seemed real, warm, and so sweetly unassuming in her nightgown and slippers that he was tempted to change the conversation to everyday things. He wanted to tease her again, to make her laugh as he used to. He wanted to hear her calling him to breakfast, or casually gossiping about people he didn’t know. He wanted to feel her fingertips on his forehead, over his heart, as she gave him her usual morning blessing. This was not an ordinary encounter, however. She had found him somewhere between life and death. She had found him because life had laid a path for her . . СКАЧАТЬ