To Join the Dance

A bright new moon hangs low in the sky. It is thin and sharpened as the farmer’s sickle when the grain is ripe for harvest. There are heavy clouds this night which hide the stars from view. They shroud the land in eerie shadows that stretch, ripple, and obscure the bodies of one million voices. Voices that croak and whine and hum; voices that rumble and purr and chirp. This is the band. The Jungle's Night Symphony.

Perhaps the clouds perform a service. Could it be? Do they serve to hinder the vision of stars; the happy, twinkling children of Heaven, from what transpires below? It is not for the Beloved Innocent to witness tragedy lest they fall into deep sadness and one by one wink out and die.

An unnatural stillness settles over the village. It is leaden and stifling. A baby cries out from inside a wooden hut and it's mother presses the small bundle tightly against her breast, soothing him on her lap by firelight. "Hush," she whispers, stroking his hair worriedly. The dangers are many, and he is so small. "Don't make a sound."

Punishing wind carries heat from the day’s industry. Waves of warm, brown dust roil along, beating at thin walls and seeping in through the cracks. It settles in houses, on people and on cattle lowing in dry pastures beyond the walls. The Undefeated Conqueror, it claims every inch of every surface for it's very own.

Night usually brings mercy from the glaring sun. Tonight dusk barely registers; so cruel was the day’s assault. The people are quiet. They lie still in their beds to save their strength. Heat saps strength. Everyone knows this to be true.

Even the flies conserve what energy they have for the next day’s droning. They collect on rusted water tanks by the dozen. There is no one brave enough to shoo them off.

As the dust whips past, it strips the few drops of moisture left until lips are cracked and tears are nothing more than thin trails of salt on parched brown skin. The people feel brittle tonight. There is foreboding in the air.

But the tears are still shed; floods of them pour forth in silence. There are so many tears you ask the people sharply, have you gone mad?!

A passage must be witnessed this night. And here are all the witnesses, cramped together, seated on chairs and on the floor, wherever an inch of space may be found. There are mourners, and dust, collecting together as they wait for the end.

They weep silently in the old woman's hut. Their shoulders tremble and they hide their faces in their sleeves. She is much beloved, the old woman, and now she is leaving and they mean to see her off. She is a mother to the whole village, a grandmother to them all, and they will weep for her at her end.

Packed, body to body, in such cramped little quarters. They bear it for her sake, yet you cannot monitor her fleeting condition without another body in your way. As one of science, you know the mourners will surely die in this heat if they carry on! You cannot save the old woman, and you cannot save all her mourners should they take a turn for the worst. This display of bereavement is asinine. They must leave you to your work!

You cry out: Grieve less for the dead for they are past their suffering, and ware your own mortality! For you must endure even as this old woman goes to the ground! Stand aside and let her pass in comfort!

In a single voice they silence you, suddenly angry and full of fear. You are a fool who speaks of Death without the knowledge that She is listening; and dear gods, what is that? The atmosphere becomes electric. The air is pregnant with expectation.

Yes, you fool, see how the wind howls? How the earth quivers? She is certainly on the way. Their silent mourning was for nothing, because you spoke out of turn on a dark night ignorant of the customs of the land, and now She is certainly on the way. But for your foolish words said in careless haste She would have passed over this night. The old woman would have slipped away to her rightful place in paradise but it is too late! She knows now, and SHE IS MOST CERTAINLY ON THE WAY.

You do not believe in fairies, or spirits, or ghosts, or the old gods, or any such superstition. It is wives tales; every last word intended to spook unruly children into reverential obedience. When a man is grown he must not allow such nonsense to cloud his judgement.

Laws, money, science... these things are the real powers of the world. Leave the stories for the children and soothsaying street beggars in the city. You start explaining these facts to the mourners: that they need not fear make believe, but angrily they turn away from you. They turn instead towards her; towards the object of their grief; the old woman in her white sari who has breathed her last this day.

Outside the hut that sickle moon takes on the glint of hard steel. The light it sheds now is cruel and sharp and brilliant. Strangely, the world looks more sinister now in its blue-white glow than it did under long shadows.

The air is cloying with jasmine, sweat, and incense. Pressure builds; you can feel it stop up your ears. Time grinds to a halt. An eternity passes this way and you wonder if life will ever go on. Finally you feel it again, the rumbling of the earth as some great behemoth moves closer and closer to the village; to this tiny fire-lit hut and its cluster of bodies both living and dead.

Each footfall sounds like thunder. You do not believe, cannot believe in that which is not proven, but the fear will not abate.

Did you know- your fear is prehistoric? It is engrained in you just as it was engrained in your ancestors, handed down the line from the very first men. It is fear of the dark and all those unknowable monsters that thrive in it. It is fear of teeth and claws springing from shadowy corners. Great beasts lie in wait to bring ruin after the sun goes down. So it has always been.

There is no cure for this fear. It was born in the time before your laws or science or money. You are powerless before it and must resign yourself to your fate.

You try to look upon the faces of the mourners, but they are hidden. They lie prostrate on the floor, in supplication to the Goddess and her procession who have come to claim a new soul.

You should join them, the mourners, but you cannot. Your science brain cannot process this power. Disbelief makes you still. Then a gust of wind tears the small door open, and you are cured of disbelief forever more.

That sliver of moon shines brightly enough to illuminate a Beast treading up the beaten pathway. It rustles up a dust storm with the rising and falling of trunk-like feet. Its gargantuan body is draped in gold brocade secured by silver chains while its mammoth tusks, blacker than ebony, are capped in more gold and rubies.

This Beast cannot be compared to any mere elephant. You have seen elephants before, full grown bulls in their glory on the plains of the Savannah.

This one towers over all those others as though it is their King, the first of their kind. Its eyes emit a light of their own, a silver-white fog through which you can see the passage of millennia. He knows the memories of the world. He was there at it's founding.

The Beast is a God of the old world; a God summoned to the village this night to perform an ancient duty. And that duty is Her.

There She is; the Goddess, or is She the prisoner? Both may be true, or neither one. Seeds of truth live in every legend but who in this age can sift them out? The fact remains She is there. Captive or free we mere mortals can never know.

Her body, tall and slender, is draped in black so deep it pulls you towards Her. The Void itself serves to clothe Her frame. You can see Her trapped there, bound in silver chains between the arches of those sharp tusks on a palanquin made resplendent with gems.

Her arms are spread wide as though She embraces the whole world. Her embrace brings no warmth. Only the chill of death can be found there, and that may be why She has been shackled thusly; for if She were free surely all life would end as She took it up against Her accursed bosom.

Half Her face is concealed by a midnight veil; Her long raven's hair ripples loose in a river behind Her. Her complexion is porcelain in the light, and Her full mouth is open in song. The words are those beyond the hearing of mortal men. They tell of the Unmaking of the Universe.

That is Her name; Old Mother the Unmaker.

Behind Old Mother and her minder the Elephant King follows the Death Parade.

They are the Legions of the Damned. The way to Paradise is forever closed to them. They have been plucked from the Wheel of Reincarnation and placed in a realm which was never their own. There is only one path left for them and that is in the wake of the Great Beast and his charge. It is the way of the Dance.

There are throngs of them; Her worshipers and constant companions, her tumblers and jesters and whirling dervishes and standard bearers who dance to her song of Unmaking for all Eternity.

How old are the oldest among their number? Some are as ancient as the earth they tread upon. The ones closest to the Great Beast appear misshapen. Their backs and knees are bent low while large knuckles scrape their way across foliage littered ground.

Heads are overly large and distended jaws hold too many teeth. Those teeth gnash in time to the furious beating of one thousand drums. Here some of the group have shimmering scales; there others are covered in many-colored feathers and toes are webbed and clawed. Are they even men at all? Our ancestors were never so grotesque.

To Old Mother the Unmaker it does not matter. It matters only that they join in Her jubilation; that they stay with Her forever in their mad fervor - this is all She wants.

Some among Her number bear Her standard. They are Old Mother's attendants and only they may be still. The others must dance to her song in the wake of the Great Beast for all the ages. They beat their drums; they clap, leap, twirl, and sway, but you can find no merriment in their celebration.

They are so weary. They laid down once, these multitudes, at the moment of their passing. They have not lain down once in the eons since. Rest, you pray for them sadly. They want nothing more than to rest.

The train moves this way now. The Great Warden and his Lady Prisoner with their horde of dancing revenants are nearly here. The hut trembles, your body trembles, and the wind wails on in terrible ecstasy.

It is too late for you to take your place on the floor alongside the mourners. You can no longer avert your gaze. How you will come to regret this, Believer of Science. In time the sight will consume you. Mortal eyes may never look upon the "others" without paying a hefty price.

From the corner of your eye you see the old woman twitch. She is dead. You listened to her pulse fade, then stop yourself. Her death certificate bears your mark, and yet somehow the impossible transpires. She is moving now.

The old woman was called “Voice of the Springtime” in her days of youthful beauty. She sang like a lark when her heart was full. She has no name at all in death. She gets up in a single motion and casts her husk of a body aside for the earth to take into itself, as it will in time.

Are your eyes deceiving you, or does that wizened body look smaller now? Has it shriveled now the soul has left it vacant? Is there nothing Holy about the flesh at all?

Voice of the Springtime stares aghast at the vision of the Mammoth at her doorway. She falls to her knees and howls, rending wizened fingers through stringy hair. She is lost! She is lost! How can this be?!

Tears trickle down her face and she screams and writhes around like one who has been set on fire. You hear nothing but the howling wind. Like the song of Old Mother the Unmaker, her lamentations only echo through the Other Side now.

She is piteous on the ground. She weeps and begs for forgiveness with a silent tongue. It is to no avail.

This is not the intended fate for one who lives a full, contented life. Voice of the Springtime was devout and soft spoken in life. She had faith in the old ways and needed little to bring her joy. She sacrificed at the altars and fasted on the auspicious days. Her needs were few and her humility and tributes pleased the gods.

The mourners are her people. They knew the legends as she knew them; they believed as she believed. They mourned in silence so Old Mother would not hear her passing and take Voice of the Springtime for Her own. She felt safe from this destiny and when she drew her last breath, her death rattle came as a sigh of relief.

She has a man and three still-borns waiting to greet her in the place beyond death. But now she will never meet them because Old Mother the Unmaker has come for her. The Goddess will not be denied.

Her new mistress grows tired of waiting. It will not go well for the woman who was once called Voice of the Springtime if she tarries in this place for too long. She gathers herself up from the dust and places a tender hand on the heads of the mourners. She bids them farewell. They do not see her go.

On her way out the door of the place which was her home for seven long decades she glances over at you. Ahh, now she knows who summoned the Goddess here. Her gaze is one of accusation and sorrow. It is full of the knowledge that her eternal suffering is on your hands, Believer of Science. You were told to be silent. Yet in your frustration, you spoke and damned one who never did you wrong.

The Great Beast lifts the spirit from the doorway with its powerful trunk. It raises her to that space between its tusks where she can meet her new mistress face to face. Voice of the Springtime whispers something fervently to Old Mother the Unmaker, but what it is you cannot tell.

The veil does not move, yet somehow you know that the Goddess sees all in spite of it. You can feel her gaze set on you for only moment, and suddenly you feel the palm of your hand tingle, then burn. You do not move to look. You do not cry out from the pain. You dare not.

With a single bow of her wizened head and a kiss on the Goddess’s left hand where it is bound to the Beast’s tusk the old woman's fate is sealed. She belongs to the Death Parade now and will Dance until time ends and there are no more souls to be taken in this world.

As the Great Beast turns back towards the jungle, waves of dancers split to allow him passage. He moves. Each step is slow and deliberate, and creates a boom that echoes throughout the land and warns the living to stay inside this night.

The Legion assembles once more, swaying to the song of lament only they can hear. Now with one more unfortunate wraith to shuffle along the pathway with them, they Dance towards the jungle in the distance. Voice of the Springtime turns once, and you know how terrible is the weight of your sin from the despair in her face, but it is too late. She belongs to Old Mother the Unmaker and can never be free. She begins the ceaseless dance of the damned.

The Giant and Legion finally disappear into the thicket. You have been frozen to the same spot and do not dare move until that final cursed spirit vanishes from view. Then the spell is broken. The mourners begin to move. They rise and stretch and make and eat and talk to remind themselves that they are blessed to be among the living.

One among their number, a woman, screams and faints dead away. They are all looking at you now, murmuring, pointing; faces horrified by the change that has taken place.

Your hair has turned as white as the driven snow. You look old where you were young only a few short moments ago. And there is a mark on the palm of your hand, in the shape of a sickle moon. It is Her mark. Old Mother the Unmaker has chosen you. At Voice of the Springtime's behest, She has chosen you.

Man of law, money, science, She has chosen you; a non-believer whose youthful, modern ambitions have all been curbed this night. One day the earth will tremble once more when She comes for you and brings you into Her fold. And then you too will join in the hellish unending dance, and trail along in the Death Parade with Song of the Springtime at your side.