The GoldenCity

Gabriel took her hand and squeezed it tightly, then he got out of the van. By now, he knew the location of every surveillance camera in the area and followed a complicated route that avoided their scrutiny. A minute later, he was entering the catacombs. And a short time after that, he was lying on the bed inside the secret room.

***

Once he had passed through the four barriers of air, water, earth and fire, some essence of his Self had a consciousness of movement and direction. He knew the way back to the First Realm, and he deliberately moved away from this coldness. Like a miner trapped underground, he followed a narrow passageway toward warmth and sunlight.

***

When Gabriel opened his eyes, he saw that he was lying on a beach of pebbles and coarse sand. Waves collapsed on the shore in a constant rhythm, and he could smell clumps of dead seaweed rotting at the edge of the shoreline.

Is someone here? Are people watching me? He stood up, brushed the sand off his jeans and surveyed this new world. He was a few yards away from a shallow river that emptied into the sea. The sand and stone were dark red, like rusty iron, and the surrounding vegetation seemed to have absorbed some of this color. The seaweed and the big ferns near the river were reddish green, and the scrub bushes near the tidal line had bright scarlet berries that shivered with each gust of wind. It was like his world with subtle differences. Perhaps all life had started at the same point, and then some small occurrence-the fall of a leaf, the death of a butterfly-had pushed creation into a different direction.

The wavering shadow that marked the passageway back to the Fourth Realm was only a short distance away. Near that point, at the border between sand and shore, someone had built a cairn of rocks with chunks of red sandstone. A narrow pathway led away from the cairn and through the surrounding marshland. Far in the distance, the land rose up to a line of green hills.

A screeching sound startled him, and he stepped away from the cairn. Overhead, a flock of birds with large pointed wings and long necks were circling over the turbulent patch of water where the river current encountered the sea.

And then a revelation came to him. Although these birds were hundreds of yards away, he could enter into their consciousness. This wasn’t some allegory where lions appeared and talked to human beings about theology. The birds saw the world from their animal perspective. They were aware of the angle of their wings, the dark shapes moving beneath the waves, the sun and wind, the sense of rising higher while constant hunger made them look for food.

Turning away from the sea, he allowed his mind to enter into the ivy growing by the river. Unlike the birds, the ivy offered a simple, resonant message-as if someone was playing a single key on a cathedral organ. He was aware of the plant’s slowness and strength, the stubborn tenacity of its growth, its reaching search for water and light.

This new awareness felt like a moment out of time. It could have taken only a few seconds or several years. It was the presence of the cairn that pulled him out of the dream. This natural world, without roads or cities, was probably the Third Realm of the animals, but it looked like a Traveler had appeared on this beach and built this particular monument. If he looked toward the mountains, he could see another cairn in the distance that marked a route through a costal marsh.

Gabriel started up the pathway, his shoes sinking in the muddy ground. After awhile, the river opened up to a lagoon where two large birds-like reddish-brown swans-floated on the still water. The birds raised their heads, and he sensed their curiosity as he forced his way through a clump of reeds.

Eventually, he left the coastal area and began to pick his way across a rocky patch of ground. There was no path to follow, and he kept glancing over his shoulder to keep the cairn in view. He placed a pebble on top of each new stack of rocks to mark his progress.

Something was watching him. He could feel it. When he spun around, he saw a small animal-like a chipmunk-peering out from a crack in the rocks. When Gabriel laughed out loud, the animal squeaked a protest and disappeared into his hole.

As he gained elevation, a line of boulders appeared that resembled the broken pieces of an ancient wall. Gabriel’s shoes crunched on gravel as he found a gap between two stones and scrambled up the slope to the edge of a long plateau covered with grass. Mounds dotted the area; it looked as if a giant had fallen into an endless sleep near the base of the hills and now his body had been absorbed by the earth and covered with a green comforter.

The grass brushed against Gabriel’s legs as he began to search for the path. In the distance, dark shapes floated through the meadow and then vanished behind one of the mounds. A few minutes later, a herd of horses trotted over top of the rise.