episode 30: Doors to Everywhere

-Ellen-

Three days later, two a.m. found me tracking a rattling noise in the wall, like branches against a window, but somehow conveying a clattering sense of otherness. It moved, like the others, creeping in through the spaces between the walls, the bulkheads over the stairwells, soffits under the roof, and any other dead space or unopened doorway. This was the only characteristics that any of the ‘visitors’ seemed to share. We'd had about five or six of them so far. The hole that Shigeto had trapped by repairing the kitchen wall had wandered and taken root in these places.

So now, any visiting creatures caught here would emerge from any crack or newly opened door. The cracks were bad enough, but I’d broken two jars of jam and dropped a tin on my bare toes, because of what I’d found when opening a cupboard in the kitchen. Shigeto had been caught in a wrestling match with something that looked like an old jacket when he’d gone to the hall closet. I’m sure that I would have laughed; okay, I did laugh, but stopped at the look of panic on Shigeto’s face. And when I saw the teeth.

So, I'd learned to stay prepared. I’d grabbed a sprig of rosemary, leaf of rowan, bough of ash and a stick of chalk from my night table before tracking my current prey, and was somewhat relieved to find myself at a small crack in the baseboard of the upstairs hallway. Small was good, and hopefully easy to trap. I drew the circle, half on the floor, the other half on the wall, skirting the top of what was now a breach into our world, and cast the ward just as the creature emerged. It was a skinny thing, unfolding itself out of the crack, a humanoid version of a stick insect. To my surprise, it sensed the ward immediately and tried to tuck itself out of it, squeezing through metaphorical and physical flaws in my spell. But my will proved stronger, and I plugged those gaps with my sense of purpose. Then, to my shock, it tried to find gaps in my psyche, to find a way out of the trap I held in my mind by sneaking through it. But I knew my own mind, and I blocked the thing right quick. It was a simple mind, but its strength of will and persistence shocked me. Still, I was tempted to let it sort through that maze and see what it could find. My momentary lapse in concentration was enough for the creature to follow my curiosity, that desire to know more, and follow that into my mind. I gave a wry chuckle at its deviousness under my breath, and bent my focus to the ward once more, leaving my curiosity aside.

It gave up then, folding itself into what appeared to be a small bundle of innocuous sticks. I drew additional sigils on my ward and called upon the protective aspects of the herbs I’d brought with me. It had roused as I’d changed the ward, as it tried to probe my thoughts, though it had not moved. I held the idea of the first incantation clearly in my head, before adding components of the second, and the creature did not have the opportunity to find the gap between the two spells, so closely associated were they, in intent. Then I concentrated on the altered lines of the ward and squeezed. Now it moved, unfolding itself, alarm suffusing its stance as it watched the lines of chalk shrink inexorably inward. It scrambled backwards, towards the physical aspect of the crack, but that was not the opening that I allowed. I concentrated on the other opening there, a chink of space between worlds. I felt its pain, terrible pain, both physical and psychic. But I was tired, irritated with its presumption and I kept squeezing. The essence of the farm wanted this alien intruder gone, and I used that natural antipathy to capture the energy of the creature's fear to further fuel the spell. Finally, there was a psychic ‘pop’ and the crack between worlds, still weak, opened. The creature had been expelled into some other place. I could taste its strangeness, felt it permeate me for a moment. I managed some brief understanding of the world beyond, enough to weave a closing, moving the creature back to what I hoped was its own world. It seemed likely, as I pondered that world; redolent of branch, root, sun, and soil. The little creature that had snuck through had been young, mobile, and curious. It had been these characteristics that drew it to our world, one that differed greatly from its own, one filled with movement and dynamic life. The beings I sensed there were old beyond knowing, contemptuous of my changeable mind, of the ephemeral nature of flesh. I felt the sluggish flow of sap in winter, the slow, inevitable approach of spring, the sense of time as an endless, grinding loop.

Shigeto came upon me standing there, dazed by what I’d felt.

"Ellen?"

I turned, slowly. He took a step forward. In that moment, I was shocked to feel a certain aversion to his animal nature, so different from the strength and solidity of the ancient trees I’d sensed in the world beyond. Then, to my surprise, I felt his magic, rudimentary but distinct. It had developed, somewhat painfully, through all of our work together. I felt him touch me, and when he did, this world came to me and I remembered myself, in my own time, once again. He cupped my face in his hands. I closed my eyes, savouring the soft warmth of it, not so brittle as the world I’d sensed.

"You back with me, babe? You okay? You feel okay?" Shigeto asked.

"Ah, um, I think so. Goddess, I'm tired."

"Come back to bed."

I woke only an hour or two later, startled, from a dream without flesh. Earth, Leaf, Branch and Sky. A bloodless world empty of animal life, the only heat coming from a distant sun. I felt a moment of panic, as though I’d been trapped in a world empty of human touch. But then I sank back into my own body, and savoured the soft sheets against my skin, Shigeto’s warmth only inches from me, the soft sound of his snoring, even his slightly sour breath as he exhaled. It was my world, so different from that place of sap and root, earth and stone, where flesh and blood were profoundly alien. Other worlds that I’d sensed when I’d forced back the other creatures had been larger, even scarier, but none had been so simultaneously familiar yet other. I wrapped myself around Shigeto, yearning for his animal warmth, and slept again.

When I woke, it was light. I reached for Shigeto, but all that was left of him was a warm spot on the bed. Glancing at the clock, I slipped on some clothes and went into the kitchen, staring at the innocuous pantry doors. I opened them to look at the wall behind them. It was an exterior wall, the one that had broken in the collision of Babe and Takara. Only now was I really beginning to understand what had happened. That massive explosion had been more than the simple destruction of two powerful magical creatures; the energy released by Babe and Takara’s destruction had torn a hole in our world at that spot.

When Shigeto had mended that wall, he’d also trapped that tear in space-time in the fabric of our house. Perhaps if it had been a more mundane building, the crack would have simply torn the wall open again, but our house was filled with magic, both deliberate and haphazard; from the wards protecting us from ill-fortune to the spells and grimoires scattered across the work tables and shelves in the basement lab. So the eldritch energy had crept along the lines of power and energy within the house, and expressed its essence in the various openings of the house. Every doorway, drawer or crack in the plaster was a place of potential manifestation of that flaw in reality. And as it moved, its nature changed, opening a way not only to another world, but whole other planes of existence. I understood this only now, for it was the only explanation possible for the wildly diverse nature of the creatures and their magic.

I held my hands out between the rows of pickled beets and sacks of flour to touch that wall. Even that light touch made me shudder and I flinched my hand away. It was growing, that crack, and I knew of no power that could stop it. Eventually, that flaw in our world would rip wide open, and chaos would ensue. I thought of the anemic magic of the Inquisitors and the priests of the approved religions and sneered. They would never understand it, let alone be able to close it. Only I had some understanding, some insight gleaned from the creatures that I’d encountered. I thought about the twig creature from the previous night, felt that resonance still within me, and pressed my hand to the wall once again. I didn’t open the door to that place. I wasn’t mad. Instead, I used that aspect of myself that the twig had touched and pressed my metaphorical ear against it.

It wasn’t until sometime later; I didn’t know how much that I heard a voice. Not the wind or the rustle of branches, but something, something; no, someone else. I woke from a fugue state to find myself in the basement sitting on the floor under the little maple, coffee half drunk, and cold; my hair caught in the branches of the tree. I could sense its stiff yet supple embrace, and through it, the other trees in the room. I felt a wave of disorientation, and scrambled away with a small cry, fighting against the sensation I'd experienced. It had been almost the same as when my mind had touched the world of trees. It disturbed me – the strangeness of it, — yet I could sense these trees in my basement in a way I never had before. Their cold slow thoughts, reaching deep for water and earth, stretching towards streaming light. I began to understand how little I knew and had some glimmerings of where I might begin deepening my relationship to these creatures that held the earth. That world had taken me over; however, temporarily, my mind had not been my own. Had I linked to the trees on the other side, rather than the trees of my own world, I do not know what would have happened.

Then the voice that had awakened me came again – it was Shigeto, he called out, "Ellen?"

"I’m down here," my voice sounded strange to my own ears, strange reverberations like the creaking of tree branches.

He came down the stairs. "I felt something like last night, again."

"Yes," I said. "Yes, it must have been the trees you felt. Or my connection to them. The little stick man and the world he came from let me understand them better. I had some insight into the way they felt about the world; maybe how they perceived it? I don't know, yet, not really. They are pure sensation – slow and deep, yet feel every flicker of light, no matter how fast."

He frowned at me. "What? How? Did you run into another one?"

"No, no," I replied. Just talking to Shigeto pushed the strangeness of the experience away, and I struggled to explain even as I was seeking understanding. "I was just trying to get a better sense of where it came from. Where these creatures are coming from and why? So, I sort of, well, pushed my senses up against the, what do I call it, the discontinuity? That has opened the way for these creatures."

"Even after last night? By the Goddess, Ellen, we do not understand what’s going on. Yet you still decide that it might be a neat idea to try to throw your consciousness into another world? We’ve already seen how that kind of contact can change your perspective, how it can change you. Who knows what else you could have encountered? You can’t be so reckless. What if you find something that consumes you, or alters you in a way that you can’t find your way back?"

I was about to object to this absurd idea, but then I heard a faint rustling in the leaves behind me, felt it draw me in, and I saw Shigeto blanch.

He shook his head. "I can’t even tell if you’re really even listening to me, or to the damn trees. We have to do something about that now."

I thought he meant to destroy the trees, and I was about to protest, loudly. Instead, though, he walked right past them and wrapped me in his arms and gave me a passionate kiss. I felt him open his spirit to me, felt its energy remind me of my own physicality. Even as he stepped away, he held the link between us open. One more thing that I wasn’t aware he could do. I basked in the strength and quiet resolve of his spirit that soothed the chaotic motion of my own, still turbulent with the many invading magics that had disrupted the calm that I’d sought when I first resolved to come to the farm.

Eventually, he spoke. "So," he said, "ideas?"

I scuffed the ground a little with a bare foot, thinking of sinking my toes into the earth, to sense what the small trees in the basement sensed, and shuddered. "I need to give it some thought."

He scowled, "Do it quickly. We don’t know when something else might show up." He wrapped me in his arms once again, and I felt his warm, lively spirit burning bright next to mine. I gave a small shudder as I felt my mind and spirit settle more fully into my body, then followed him upstairs and went into the library to start contemplating protection against alien invasion — not only of my world, but of my perception.

Over the next five days, I closed four more gates, and while they did affect me, they were all so different that nothing could really take hold. Or so I hoped. Nonetheless, the assaults on my mind by alien intelligence, no matter how rudimentary, were deeply disorienting, and I was relieved to have finally figured out a solution. I got Shigeto to draw a series of henna runes and glyphs along my spine, beside my eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. Even on my fingertips and vulva. All to strengthen my connection to this world and keep my mind linked to my body.

Those runes kept me sane after my encounter with a fire elemental. It was an embodiment of chaos, the physical laws of its world in a state of flux that were beyond me to understand at even the simplest level. Its intent and actions spoke of impulse and tumult. One moment it struggled to enter this world, then retreated from it. Inquisitive one second, furious the next. In the end, it had been surprisingly easy to close the gate - the earth, our entire world, worked to drive it back to its own realm. But like my little stick man, I had to touch the essence of the creature and its world to push it back. As its mind and spirit touched mine, I felt the runes begin to burn — their nature was in profound conflict with the creature, regardless of the thing’s intent. And while a pain lingered, I thought it was simply the pain of the magic’s energies, the price of protection. Instead, it was more akin to a fever, of an infection of some stranger magic, of another reality.

I dreamt that night of energy swirling, flames leaping from the core of my soul, surrounded by thousands of miniature suns, brothers and sisters, lovers and enemies, dancing and fighting. I woke, breathless, frightened and excited, and opened my eyes to some sort of horrible mockery of the world in my dreams. I was trapped in a world with no fire, a world so static, so inert, that it took seconds for the creature beside me to take a single breath.

In that moment, I realized I was encased in that same flesh, and that I, too, needed breath. Bolting upright, I inhaled sharply, taking in the scent of scorched fabric and the brittle sound of the burnt sheets crinkling where they’d touched my body.

I came back to myself then, to the realization that I was Ellen, and that it was my husband beside me, not some mockery of chaos’ dance. I felt the henna runes on my body slowly burning to nothing and once they were gone; I didn’t know what would happen — whether I would turn to flame myself, or if it would simply be my mind that was gone.

Once again, a world had usurped part of my essence, and I needed an antidote. Desperate, I went into the cool basement and felt the trees welcome me. Their slow minds gripped mine, slowing the frantic energy of the elemental’s world and allowing my thoughts to calm. Their view of the world allowed me to once again appreciate the eternal life cycle of the seasons, growth over years, decades, even centuries. I could allow the world’s pace to move faster than me, feeling rooted in one place, the seasons moving past me, like water in a stream.