The Secret World of Maya Alexander

Chapter 61

There was no fixed notion of how much time had passed since the snow had arrived or thawed in the land of Maya's consciousness. It had come with its hopeful message and left again without any unpleasant transition from brilliant white to gloomy sludge. The cycles which had once punctuated her life: like day and night, sleep and wakefulness or the timely shifts of the seasons, seemed to conspire to create new rhythms that were blessed with a complete disregard for measure. As though the time spent passing through a phase was never supposed to be fixed to man's clock. Moments that were brief or lingering, yet always perfectly sufficient. Light that arrived like a gentle wave to announce the dawn and then retreated with the pull of the moon to make way for the night. Sometimes the passing was as brief as the blink of an eye, yet other times the world would pause to an almost standstill amidst its light or dark for what seemed like days or weeks at a time. And whatever the world brought, was somehow exactly what its inhabitant needed.

There was starlight to wander and drift into, always punctuated at just the right moment with the bright break of dawn to aid exploration and see the world anew with the rising of its seven suns each day. When Winter came, the world would rest and replenish ready for the awakening brought with the budding of Spring. Yet just like the light and dark, seasons would shift in moments not months, like a mystical snow globe that had been enchanted with magic. A secret knowing and a secret showing of everything. Always enough. Never too much.

It was as though the world was constantly nourishing and healing. Leading and being led by its visitor. As Maya grew weary, so would the night embrace the day for rest. As she became restless, summer would enrapture her with a world brimming and full and pulsing with life before transforming into an Autumnal delight which brought an abundance of berries to burst upon her hungry tongue, leaving sap seeping from her lips. Juices that spilled and stained her skin. Purple red. Marked. Blemished cheeks painted red like a guilty pleasure which needed no shame. Until her hungry senses were satisfied but never over-indulged.  And just before the moment when the fullness of the world might have become too much for her to comprehend. Before that moment when she might have looked at her frail body and wondered if indeed she belonged, so would winter come and bring a beautiful chill to match her own. More would turn to less but never so barren or desolate to become empty.

The robin would drop the season's berries at Maya's feet and whisper the secrets of her dark friend winter. It asked her to consider how the edges of a tree are only ever truly seen when the fullness of its leaves have been shed. Like a stripping back to the bones. Seen for the first time, the structure which had borne the beautiful fleeting fullness of summer. How the branches which had bowed to bear the weight of the heavy leaves and fruit, could now stretch out again, stronger for its endeavour, resting from its purpose. The icy morning lit up those worthy branches in the silver moon and magnified their royalty. Those bones were the hidden beauty beneath the frolics of a naive Spring and a lazy summer. They were the strength of Autumn's full and final days. And now as winter brought her treasures, Maya felt as though she was seeing the beginning and the end all at the same time. Back to the core. But the core had grown stronger and was ready for rebirth.

In this layer of her being, thought and feeling merged into one and knowing did not require words. As the world turned from day to night and seasons came and went, Maya began to sense another knowing beyond that perfect world. At first she would feel terror as she closed her eyes and found herself in a small room with pale green walls and a square hole cut into the paintwork. A hole where she would try to stare long enough to sense life beyond that pane of glass. Slowly she learned to accept these moments as though she were entering a dream. Acceptance made it feel less like a nightmare and more like a vision.

Familiar faces and voices would smile kindly at her in that world on the other side of her eyes. And sometimes she felt her heart ache at the touch of her hand being stroked or squeezed or held; or at the sound of syllables made into sentences that set alight old and new pathways in her brain. She felt a humming buzz from her lips and the sounds and sights seemed to tell her things might be okay here too. She would drift pleasantly from dreams to wakefulness and just like the seasons, so her body seemed to know when she was ready to move between the two worlds of her being.

Sometimes words and sounds would linger in her consciousness, as she once again woke in the land where she felt free.

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
  Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

She had woken up on what seemed to be an early Spring morning and heard a group of silver birches whisper the familiar line like an old friend. Her chest ached in as her mind took her back down a pathway where the tiny egg shaped buds packed tightly on the delicate silver branches tried to murmur to her of a pain buried deep. They grew fatter before her eyes before unfolding out into jagged heart shaped triangles which began to weep.

Maya could not bear to hear the sound of the new life wailing with joy. Her hands clung to her ears and she turned her head away from the group of silver birches. Their illusion shattered, darkness fell over the land.

An eerie grey filled the sky as the world fell into shadow and the heavens above it opened and graced the land with a ferocious storm. The trees were bare once more and nature offered no canopy for shelter. Hard icy rain landed upon Maya's arms, stinging like the falling of a thousand shards of mirrored glass. She tried to wrap her arms around herself to become her own protector from the sudden unexpected hostility of her world.

The horizon turned from grey to black and Maya looked up at the sky, her eyes widening. Her dilated pupils searched for light, but were pierced instead with a dark figure which stretched across the skyline. Her body froze as though it was playing dead, yet her senses heightened and a burning screeching sound pained her ears. It penetrated deep into the locked passageways of her mind. Shattering bolted doors until a flood was unleashed and the empty peacefulness of her mind was bursting and brimming with noise.

As the figure filled the sky, there was a moment before its landing when its black outline was all that Maya could see. Wings. Claws. Feathers. Beak. It was a bird. Like a raven yet more mighty and vast, like a creature that could only exist within myths and legends. And although its figure was foreboding, Maya felt relief instead of fear. Its beastly wings held back the thrashes of the icy rain and she found herself under shelter once more. Sheltered from the physical pain at least, but not from the noise. The noise kept on ringing into her ears and dancing through her veins.

And as the bird took her under its wing, darkness enveloped her. Visions reached across the emptiness of all that was black. There was a man shouting. Angry. A baby crying. And a woman hiding all alone. A little girl sang her name. Familiar faces seemed to be searching for her.  Fear. The woman ran into an old broken house. People peered in the windows and laughed. Then left. A father smashed a bottle of liquid poison. A mother watched with a zipped mouth. A fire burned and spread across the visions until at last the mighty ocean rose like a Tsunami and drowned them all. Everything turned back to black.

Buried deep within the darkness of the mighty raven's wing, the cacophony that had pierced Maya's ears was replaced with a single cry. Her eyes darted through unseeing, finally ready to capture the sound. The bird raised his wing and revealed a dark cave close to the peak of a steep precipice before them. The crying was coming from inside that cave.

The sharp rain pierced and stabbed against Maya's skin once more as the bird took flight. Maya was alone again. Except for the cries of the cave. The seven suns rose in the sky and a rainbow appeared. Light and rain. Hope and tears. Maya had never seen the end of a rainbow before, yet there it had landed right before her eyes like a fantastical carpet which invited her to venture towards the cliff edge and into the cries of the unlit cave.

The world seemed to whisper 'Beauty is Truth. Truth Beauty' as Maya followed the carpet of light and walked into the dark.

Truth

You believe in Truth?
Nothing deceives like Beauty
Dust and delusion