EHYEH-ASHER-EHYEH (I AM THAT I AM): An Elena Duran/Corazon Negro
Vi Moreau (vmoreau@directvinternet.com)
Mon, 23 Sep 2002 10:14:27 -0400
Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh (I am that I am) 21/34
Julio Cesar divad72@prodigy.net.mx
Vi Moreau vmoreau@directvinternet.com
Cabin in the Pampa on the Duran Estancia, near Las Flores, Argentina
March 29, 2013
They arrived in the early nighttime. As they were unpacking their supplies
from their rented Jeep, Elena said, "The cabin is checked and cleaned every
Tuesday like clockwork. It's Friday, which should give us some days without
interruption."
"We should be so lucky!" Connor exclaimed, putting down a bag of canned
goods and looking around and inside the cabin. He went up a spiral staircase
to an airy loft, which overlooked the living area downstairs. The loft had
floor to ceiling windows along the north wall for light-it was designed,
after all, as an artist's studio, complete with tables, easels, paint
supplies, even a potter's wheel, and he spent a few minutes looking over
some old paintings stacked in a corner. Someone who had lived here had been
a very talented portrait artist, he realized. All the windows provided a
beautiful, clear view, but the place was impossible to defend; of course, no
place
was safe for them. The loft overlooked the half of the first floor, which
made up a large living area; the other half, the back, was divided into a
kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. The kitchen had a door leading outside. There
were windows in the living area, kitchen and bedroom-even the bathroom had a
window. He examined the bottom story carefully while the others, who had
been here before, brought in the rest of their supplies.
Only because he knew there was a secret passage was he able to find it, one
of the walls of the closet, which went out then down. He followed the
rough-hewn passage and emerged in the middle of a large stand of ombu trees,
then spent the better part of the afternoon familiarizing himself with the
layout of the trees, the river that ran near the edge, the barn, and the
flat open pampa on three sides of the cabin. Even if their enemies hid in
the trees, they'd be a good half-mile away, close enough for a skilled
sniper with a good rifle. Fortunately, Duncan was a skilled sniper and had a
good rifle, but their enemies might be equally prepared.
When Connor walked back into the cabin he smelled Duncan's beef stew, and
his mouth watered like one of Pavlov's dogs. Duncan was stirring a pot, and
Elena was, unsurprisingly, doing a smooth, calming tai chi form. "Where's
Corazon Negro?" Connor asked.
"Getting ready for the ritual he needs to perform to go into the Dream"
Duncan answered. He pulled the spoon out of the pot, blew on it, and gave
Connor a taste.
"More rosemary," Connor suggested, then lowered his voice. "Do you think
this Dream stuff will work?"
Duncan shrugged. "The Ancient Gathering thinks it will work. Corazon Negro,
the New Dreamer, thinks it will work. More importantly, Lilitu thinks it
will work against her. It's a classic, two-pronged attack, Connor:
physically against Lilitu's body, with a sword, and mentally or spiritually
or whatever against her . spirit."
He paused as Corazon Negro came in the kitchen door. "Smells good, Duncan."
"You can't fight on an empty stomach," Duncan replied.
"Actually, I do not intend to eat, only sip a little water."
Elena called out from the living room, "And we'll have to insist that he
drink something at all."
"I must be purified, cleansed. But the rest of you should have food-your
battle will be a more ... physical one," Corazon Negro said.
"When?" Connor asked.
"At dawn. Lilitu's people are standing by; they will be here shortly after I
begin, within a few hours at most, maybe sooner."
"And our warriors, the Ancient Gathering, will be at Lilitu's hiding place
at the same time," Connor said. "So, tomorrow will be a hell of a day," he
said, stretching his arms above his head.
"I suggest you all get some sleep," Corazon Negro said, smiling.
========
Later.
Corazon Negro noticed he was bathed in sweat. A thin film coated every inch
of his body. A trail of footprints followed him down the room and into the
bathroom.
The shower hissed to life. Corazon Negro shook as he fumbled with the dial.
Running water, he thought. Just what the doctor ordered. For a second time
in nine days, he smiled. Running water was the usual folktale prescription
for these situations. Interpose running water between self and pursuing
nightmare. Take once per night as needed.
His kind, however, were traditionally on the receiving end of this
particular superstition. All of them were terrors from the past.
Nonetheless, the scalding water worked as advertised. Its humble magic not
only dispelled the physical signs of the previous struggle, but some of the
terror as well-the terror of walking with the certainty that, all his life,
he had been observed.
It was always the same-the faces of the orphan children, watching him,
judging him. He could find no hint of accusation in their glassy, unblinking
eyes, or words of condemnation on their cold, bluish lips. But the very
sight of them filled Corazon Negro with dread, with a feeling of
condemnation.
For the ninth night in a row, Corazon Negro had dreamt of the orphan
children Lilitu had killed thirty years ago in Mexico. His adopted children.
Corazon Negro closed his eyes. The faces were there still, awaiting him.
Round and bright as moons, smiling up at him from just beneath the surface
of the flames. Infinitely patient. The face of the nearest youth, a
sixteen-year-old girl held his gaze-she was his beloved Ana, who should have
been an Immortal. Corazon Negro traced the gentle curve of the youth's
smooth, unblemished cheek. The girl's icy black eyes were as large and
perfectly round as saucers. Her hair fanned out all around the bright face
like a fishing net cast upon the surface of the dark waters of time. Tangled
strands lapped gently at the slick side of the infinite.
The faces neither moved nor spoke. They had been burned and their bodies had
apparently been some time in the dust. Although the faces were calm, almost
serene, Corazon Negro knew that their deaths were not the result of some
misstep in the dark.
They had been tortured. He repeated the phrase a second time with a slight,
but significant shift of emphasis. They had been maliciously burned alive,
cast into the fire, abandoned to panic, to flounder and sink beneath the
flames. Lost to sight. Lost to memory.
Only they did not stay down-they would not stay down! They had performed
that final and miraculous transformation. They were like the alchemists,
struggling for decades in their damp cellars to work the great art-to
transmute lead into gold-to free themselves from the burden of their leaden
physical body and achieve the pure gold of spiritual transcendence. But it
was the children who had discovered how the trick was turned.
Lilitu's flames had swallowed them utterly and completely. But the children,
they had worked the great reversal, swallowing the fire in turn. They rose,
ascending bodily, if not into the heavens, at least to the flames' surface.
There they hung, suspended like luminous moons, presiding over the blaze.
These were Corazon Negro's silent accusers, his judges. The lapping flames
whispered to him like a lover's promises and gentle reproaches.
Corazon Negro no longer railed against their rebuke. In a strange way, he
had begun to look upon their nocturnal visits as something of a legacy, a
birthright.
They were old certainly, those memories of mistakes in the form of bright,
youthful faces. Older by far than Corazon Negro or any wrong he might have
committed in a thousand years. Still, he knew himself to be party to the
crime against them-if not against Ana who bobbed gently against the slick
stones of the infinite, then certainly against hundreds like her. Souls he
had cast suddenly and unprepared into the river of night.
Corazon Negro had always suspected-but did not know, could never know
now-that the infinite was brimming full of youth, swarming with golden eyes,
buoyed up ever nearer to the well's lip by the sheer mass of bodies beneath.
He imagined that some day very soon now, he might awaken to find that they
had spilled out over the brink of the infinite. He imagined the tide of the
drowned washing out over the fields, running like a tangled river through
the woodlands, crashing against the heel of the mountains. Corazon Negro
wondered what, if anything, might hope to stand against the great
flood-whether any bulwark existed against the rising tide of sins might hope
to endure.
Maybe they would win in the end, these sins. This flood of shining victims.
They had the weight of numbers behind them. They had the advantage of age,
of uncounted ages. And they were so very patient.
Corazon Negro knew that he was their victim as surely as they were his. He
had been especially sought out, chosen, marked. He was Immortal. When that
tide of sins finally rose, when his Dream lapped over into the waking world,
he would be culled out of the pack.
Corazon Negro did not fear death; he had been there so many times already.
Nor did he fear oblivion. But he very keenly felt it his duty to remain
among the mortals. This desire did not arise from any overdeveloped sense of
self-preservation, nor even of self-interest, not certainly of
self-importance.
Corazon Negro had a very acute sense of who he was. He was the last of his
kind, the last original Aztec. And that was a great and terrible
responsibility. He had witnessed what no one should be forced to witness-his
brothers slaughtered, his home destroyed. When death would come for him at
last, it would obliterate not only his body, but also it would also erase
forever certain memories, ideas, ideals in which this physical form was the
final repository.
With Corazon Negro's death would pass forever the sight of that ill-fated
ritual enacted beneath the streets of Mexico City thirty years ago-the
massacre that had destroyed Quetzalcohuatl. With his death would pass the
memory of the multiform and varied wonders, the arcane, the miracles, the
secret vigils, the hidden names of God, the hard-won treasures of centuries.
The legacy and birthright of his people, the Aztecs.
And with his death would also pass the last living memory of those
unforgettable eyes, their terrible brightness undimmed by the weight of
death and dark flames around them. In victory, the sins from the past must
necessarily die with him and the night tremors-and Lilitu-at last come to an
end.
Corazon Negro killed the spray of water and walked dripping from the tub,
painfully aware that he was ten minutes closer to that end, and not knowing
how to stop or even delay its coming.
Scalded clean by the hot water and dripping wet, Corazon Negro perched
himself on the tub's edge. He took care to avoid the sweat that still
puddled on the mattress. He tried to force his thoughts to focus on his next
move, but they led him inevitably backwards.
Up to now, his movements had been instinctual-a headlong flight away from
the site of the massacre, away from the beloved ruins beneath Mexico City.
Corazon Negro's sole purpose had been to put as much distance as possible
between himself and the all-too recent nightmares. If the truth were known,
he could not say with certainty that it was not already too late.
He did know how long he had lain pinned and helpless beneath the ruins after
Quetzalcohuatl's death. The hate against Lilitu had possessed him. Irony. It
was a human concept. It was only in the wake of her savage predations that
he began to rise above the demands of his instincts. It was as if only by
satisfying these primal, bestial needs, the more rational civilized thought
processes could begin to emerge. As reason had gradually returned, Corazon
Negro had been horrified to find himself among the familiar touchstones of
his Immortality. With mounting dismay, he recognized that his footsteps had
been drawn to the well-know gathering places, the places of power that made
up the legacy of his people. But even here, half a continent away from the
source of his pain, he was not far enough away. He wondered if it would ever
be far enough. Shaking his head, he banished such thoughts from his mind. He
had to be pragmatic.
Again, he found his thoughts returning to the legacy of his people. If he
could find an apprentice, a successor, then the knowledge of his clan might
not pass entirely from the earth.
It would have been smarter just to die. Corazon Negro let the feeling of
self-reproach crash over him like a wave. To give up, to go down. He felt
himself go under, felt acutely the weight of sins upon him. It was the sheer
enormity of the past that held him under-the voracious flood that had
already swallowed many Immortals before him and still was not sated.
Corazon Negro knew from personal experience that Lilitu's anger could never
be sated, not until she had encompassed the entire world. Her pull was
unrelenting and maybe in the end, irresistible. Already, her deep hatred had
claimed the lives of the entire Aztec people. She had singled them out,
marked them, stalked them, and trapped them. She had gathered them in and
destroyed them, and now he was the last. By default, he had become the
embodiment, the end product of the great experiment. He was the sole
receptacle of the accumulated knowledge, ambitions, lore, strivings, rites,
disappointments, schemes, hungers, ideals, tragedy, devotion and pathos of a
proud people. Of all those that bore the name of Aztlantaca, he was the
last.
The Aztec sighed deeply. Now he was more than a warrior. He was a Dreamer.
But then again, maybe it was better to let the sins close above him and
rest. Finally to rest.
There was something seductive in the watery embrace of the past, in its
oblivion. It would have been very easy to surrender himself to that
floodtide. Even if it were to mean being brought face-to-face with all the
indiscretions of a lifetime, or more precisely, of a hundred lifetimes.
Corazon Negro needed to be stronger than ever. He knew he could bear the
accumulated indiscretions, even the Immortality, that had been his constant
companions these many centuries. He turned the new recrimination over on his
tongue. Immortality. "Inmortalidad," he said out loud. It had a more of a
wicked edge to it than his original thought, sin. The word stung his throat,
but he swallowed it. Yes, he could endure even the renewed acquaintance with
Immortality.
But new images were rising toward him through the murky memories. They
worried away at his rationalizations, eroding them, carrying them away upon
the tide. The images spoke to him of a greater reckoning. They tugged at
that gauzy concept he was sheltering behind, this 'Immortality', and tore it
away, exposing the red, raw skin beneath. They left him with a far less
comforting reproach to cling to. The Quickening.
The memories ran red in a reddish swirl about him. In the Quickening, there
was life. In the Quickening, there was magic. In the Quickening, there was
power.
Corazon Negro knew himself to be a creature, a construction of the
Quickening-a flashing dynamo distilling energy from the Quickening. It was
the Quickening that gave him his longevity. It was Quickening that gave him
his power over the mortal world. It was Quickening that fueled the rites and
rituals of his race. If there were a single common element to the seemingly
endless procession of years, it was the need for Quickening. There was no
advantage in contesting the fact. He resigned himself to this latest
condemnation. He inhaled deeply and allowed his lungs to fill.
Suddenly, a vision filled his brain. His body was racked with sudden
screaming pain. Where Corazon Negro had thought to swallow only air, he
found himself filled with a far harsher realization. It was not mere air,
but killings. Murder.
An unending maelstrom of murder. The sheer monstrosity of his crimes-not
only what he had done, but what he had become-surged through him. It tore at
him from the inside. The pain of this knowledge forced him to double over,
bending him at the waist.
"No! I am the new Dreamer! I must stop Lilitu!" he whispered in pain.
Corazon Negro flung the credo into the face of the voracious past. A howl of
pure self assurance, vindication, acquittal, absolution, justification,
against its inevitable ravages. "I am the last of my people! I will endure!"
He could feel the wave break and begin to roll back before him, retreating.
Leaving him gasping for the life-giving present. "I am the Dreamer! Though
the entire world be drowned beneath Lilitu's hate, I must remain to stop
her!" He was a mountain rising from the sea. However, another thought
emerged. "Perhaps I am the last of only a race of monsters, a people formed
by and through depredations." The mountain contorted, revealing twisted
crags, cruel sea cliffs. "Perhaps I am a creature of death, murder and
cruelty, unholy rites and blasphemous hungers!" The mountaintop shook,
crumbled, and slid away into the waiting sea below. At the mountain's summit
all that remained was a blasted jumble of rock and desolation. "Perhaps my
very existence is a continual curse upon the earth!" Stunted black tress
sprang up, dotting the mountainside. Dark shapes slipped through the
undergrowth.
"But I will stand firm against the oblivion!" The sea gathered its might,
surged against the paradise of sea cliffs, and was thrown back in disarray.
"I will build myself a monument! A lasting remembrance of my people!" A dark
cloud passed over the summit like the hand of an angry God. In its shadow,
something was gathering, rolling storm-like beneath it. "A being of peace!
And Lilitu will look at me and will tremble and remember!"
Far below him, the waves scratched tentatively at the foot of the cliffs.
Yes, in time, they would have their way. Of that there could be little
doubt. Soon the waters of the past would cover the entire earth. In those
final moments, the only remaining line of retreat would be inward-to sink
into the very heart of the Dream.
"To give up? To go down? Never!" he murmured. Already Corazon Negro could
hear the madness of the lapping sins against his final shore. The bottom of
the ocean, the scratching of the grains of sand. Sliding slowly. The sound
intruded upon the oblivion. The sound of years passing. A shovelful of
years. The echo rose in pitch and immediacy. It fell with the regularity of
a spade. There was urgency in the song of the spade. A compulsion. And a
note of something familiar.
"Yo... lloht... zin... Tlil...tic..."
The alien syllables meant nothing to the dead and broken shells that lay at
the ocean's heart. But the sound echoed and rebounded within the hollow of
that shell-redoubling in meaning and intensity-until something deep within
awoke and stirred at the sound of that summons. He curled in upon himself,
tumbling, kicking. He tried to burrow himself deeper into the sands.
Awareness came flooding back in an excruciating rush. Still the voice would
not let him rest. He knew that voice.
"Yolloht... zin..."
Corazon Negro oriented himself by that voice and kicked out desperately
trying to reach for the surface. The first thing to return to him was the
light. Slowly it resolved itself into distinct shapes, patters, and visions.
Soon he could not shut out the swarm of wriggling shadows that surrounded
him.
The sea was filled with thousands of drowning bodies, all fighting to reach
the surface. The blue and bloated limbs of those who had already succumbed
to the struggle snatched at him, clung to him, bore him down, back down
toward the ocean floor and the waiting arms of oblivion.
"Yollohtzin Tliltic!"
A swollen face pressed close to his own. It bobbed gently, aimlessly, from
side to side, its short hair fanning out in the current. It regarded him
with a clinical, almost serene detachment.
"Fear not, brother, I am here," Darius told him.
Corazon Negro felt more than heard the words.
"Visita interriora somnium, rectificando inveneis occultum tui anima alter
ego. Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis..."
"Visit the center of the Dream," Corazon Negro translated. "And by purifying
it you will find your secret soul, your other self. The time has changed,
and we have changed with it..."
The center of the Dream. The forbidden place. The dark region at the very
center of himself that he must dare to go-had to go. The place where he
kept, carefully guarded, his secrets from himself. It was a dwelling place
of truths so dark they had to be forced down, chained to the bedrock, lest
they rise up to assail him in the dark hours.
Corazon Negro felt the darkness closing in on him once again. Darius's voice
was the murmur lull of the ocean currents. "It is the Dream, of course. The
power is in the Dream. And Lilitu understands this. If she wins she will
return to her realm and seek out her master, laying before him the forbidden
fruit."
There was a movement in the deepest recesses of the dark hole at the ocean's
heart. A stirring. Corazon Negro's body twisted, trying in vain to avert his
gaze from the presence rising up from the depths.
There was a swirling of sand, resolving itself slowly into a twisting
funnel. A looming mass taking form, becoming a gigantic underwater tornado.
The rising maelstrom howled with the grinding of sand and water. Corazon
Negro shielded his eyes. He could distinctly feel the impact of each grain
of sand slicing into his exposed lifetime. The shadowy form that dragged him
onward was already lost amidst the turbulent waters, drawing him directly
into the heart of the maelstrom.
A great rushing, a colossal monster of sand and water buffeted him, blinded
him, and snatched him up. He spun wildly, spinning end over end, dragging
against his anchor line. He could not quite shake the feeling that there was
something in the roiling waters, a presence stirring up the fury of the
deep, a will. Corazon Negro clawed sand from his eyes and squinted against
the weight of the water. There, at the very center of the maelstrom, a vast
shape was rising, patiently, layer upon layer. Corazon Negro strained to
catch a glimpse of it through the swirling sand that gouged his eyes. He had
to know. Had to understand and believe. If only for this brief moment before
his vision was taken from him. Corazon Negro forced his eyes open, and he
saw.
Lilitu, already devouring Darius' soul. Darius's voice echoed in his
thoughts. "Save us, brother. You are our beloved Son of the Wolf. Our
savior, our Dreamer! The new Dancer of Time! Save the world from our
Prometheus, our Lucifer."
"I will, brother! I will!" Corazon Negro yelled, strong and confident.
"Come and die, Son of the Wolf," Lilitu responded. "Come and enter night if
you dare! I am that I am!"
For a long time there was silence upon the deep and bottomless layers of
sand. Then, as if in answer, the great portal of the Dream swung wide open
to receive his prodigal son and his precious gift. "COME TO US, SON OF THE
WOLF. IT IS TIME," the Dream commanded.
The vision left him. Then Corazon Negro opened his eyes and walked into the
bedroom. With renewed hope, with excruciating care, he began gathering his
tools for the coming ritual.
========