The Age of Magic (9 page)

The darkness was alive with intangible forms. They came to a little woodland and Lao stopped walking. There were ideas that had come to him during the game that he wanted to think about. He couldn’t quite remember what they were.

He stood still and gazed at the stars in the sky. They seemed to move. He wanted to go beyond thought. He wanted things to settle in him and find their place. He also wanted to let go of old ways of being.

But Mistletoe wanted the dark. While Lao gazed at Ursa Minor, she wandered on alone, towards the bridge.

She went soundlessly past the fragrance of honeysuckle. She went into the substance of night, till her own substance was dissolved in it.

Lao stood there near the woodland, not thinking. He felt himself returning to some primal condition and lost all sense of who he was, or what he was. He was not thinking but listening to intimate whisperings. He was listening to the music of flowers. He felt he had entered an invisible temple that drifts through time. He could feel the earth revolving.

He was not aware that Mistletoe had gone.

Mistletoe had wandered into her own eternity. In the darkness she found freedom from her body and from endless watching eyes. When she was under the bridge she looked back and saw only the blackness of night but was not afraid. She walked into the marmorial darkness.

As she passed beneath the darkness of the bridge she passed into her own legendary world. She saw a huge white horse in a field of blue flowers. Then the horse disappeared.

She came to a field. In the middle of the field was a circus. The music of pipes and strings and drums pervaded the warm summer night. Performers were rehearsing in the artificial moonlight that poured from an opalescent globe. The dancers did their stretches, the jugglers practised with their seven balls, and knife throwers slung their knives at revolving targets.

Women in red and yellow outfits rode on unicycles, balancing a stack of books on their heads. Women in golden dresses stood on the backs of horses, white birds on their outstretched hands.

Under the glow of a Chinese lantern a girl wrapped in the universal flag of imagination wielded a starry wand. With the wand she turned a furry fruit into a rabbit, the rabbit into a bird, the bird into an angel, the angel into a star, and she sent the star into the sky, where it twinkled merrily. Mistletoe smiled at the girl as she went past. The girl looked at her, puzzled.

Mistletoe watched a harlequin execute somersaults through hoops of coloured lights. A black girl dressed like a Valkyrie flew around in the air and swooped down through a triangle of fire, singing.

Nearby there was a blue tent with the sign of the pentagram. The door flap opened and a magician with milk-white eyes came out. The magician wore a white suit and a black top hat, and carried a cane whose upper section had two entwined snakes. But the magician, turning around, became a beautiful woman in a blue suit with a pentagram wand. She danced over to Mistletoe, and said:

‘We thought you’d never show up.’

Mistletoe, surprised that she had been expected, felt the heat of an inexplicable fire above her head.

The magician in the blue suit with the different back led Mistletoe to the centre of the field. Then she clapped her hands together three times, and said:

‘Hey, daughters of Pan, guess who’s here.’

The harlequin stopped somersaulting, and landed in perfect balletic balance. The conjuror allowed a dove to circle the air untransformed. The girls riding the horses leapt down, and the flying black girl dropped gracefully into their midst. Soon the jugglers, knife throwers, unicyclists and dancers had all gathered round in a circle. They stared and then, as if in sudden recognition, one of them cried:

‘It’s Mistletoe!’

‘It’s our Mistletoe!’ said another.

‘We thought we’d never see you again.’

‘We thought you’d forgotten us.’

Then they clustered round her, welcoming their sister back to their enchanted world.

‘Perform for us!’ the conjuror cried.

‘But what shall I do?’ Mistletoe asked.

The innocence of the question made them laugh. Mistletoe still looked perplexed. Then the magician touched her on the head with the pentagram wand and Mistletoe remembered what her special talent was in that world.

A large white canvas stood before her. The conjuror gave Mistletoe her wand. Without thinking, as if she had been doing this all her life, Mistletoe began drawing figures on the magic canvas. The figures, as if emerging from mirrors, fell out of the canvas and became real. She drew a white horse and it galloped round the field. She sketched a flute and gave it to the black girl. She drew bottles of champagne and passed them round. She inscribed the outlines of a book, and someone asked what it was called.

‘You suggest,’ Mistletoe said.

‘Astonishing the gods,’ the magician replied.

Mistletoe wrote out the title, and gave it to her. The daughters of Pan applauded. Then Mistletoe wrote the words:
MUST GO NOW
. And they all said, ‘No! Stay with us!’

Mistletoe wrote on the canvas:
I LOVE YOU ALL
.

‘We love you too,’ they replied.

Then she wrote:
ARCADIA
.

And they clapped their hands, and said, ‘We’ll see you there!’

Mistletoe stopped drawing and returned the wand to the conjuror. The circus folk gathered round and hugged her. They led her to the edge of the field of blue flowers and the magician tapped her on the head with the pentagram wand.

Mistletoe found herself beneath the bridge, where it was darkest. An illusive melody in her head accompanied her past the fragrance of honeysuckle, when she regained her substance from the riches of the night.

He had been searching for her up and down the street. He had ventured towards the bridge but thought it unlikely that she had gone into its darkness. He had been beginning to be frantic, fearing he had somehow lost her forever. Then he decided to be still, and to wait. But his anger and his fear remained.

He was standing where she had left him, and he still appeared to be gazing at the stars. But his profile communicated to her a sense of estrangement.

Upon seeing him she knew he had been worried. She wanted to tell him how much she needed a little renewal. I have to keep overcoming myself in order to love more fully, she thought, as she drew closer to him. How can I not breathe the secret hour if it will enrich me?

Lao stood in the shadow of the woodland, and turned his head slightly in her direction, and she knew that he was still upset. But a woman should have her mysteries, Mistletoe thought, and they should be mysterious even to herself. As she got near him she sensed his conflicting emotions. Loving or eviling, she thought. Which would win?

From experience she knew that any gesture she made might worsen his mood. She gave him a severe little smile. Then she went past him quietly. She went on down the street. The architect of the dark had redesigned all the houses with night-substance.

Most places look better and truer at night, she thought. She came to a solitary street lamp. Finding herself in the centre of the light, she turned and saw Lao walking towards her. He had a contemplative look.

She went on into the darkness, and waited for him, with a question in her mind. When he stood in the ghostly pool of light, alone in a theatre of night, she began speaking to him. She reminded him of something he had written a long time ago. He had written that in dreams the mind is the stage, and the play staged upon it is our drama, already scripted in the book of life.

As he listened a shiver ran through him.

‘If that’s the case,’ continued Mistletoe, ‘then the people in our dreams are all us. The places are us. The meaning is us too. We are the message, and we can change the dream. We can alter the script.’

She paused. Disturbed by an intimation whose source is dream-like, he stood rooted in the theatre of light.

‘You said if we can’t change the beginning we can change the end. If we can’t change the end we can change the middle while dreaming and so change the meaning of the end. But something bothers me.’

Lao stayed silent. He was struck by the way the night altered the tone of her voice and the implication of her words.

‘If the stage is us, and all the people in the dream are us, and the dream is our drama, why are we watching?’

‘Because we’re the audience too,’ said Lao, seduced by the game.

‘Why do we need an audience then?’

‘Because we learn by doing and remembering what we do. There’s a watcher in us keeping an eye on the dream-drama in our minds. We don’t know who that watcher is.’

Lao paused for a moment. He was dissatisfied with his answer and conscious of her silence. He made another attempt.

‘We only play one role in life. We’re either the participant or the spectator. In dreams we’re both at the same time. Maybe this speeds up our understanding. The participant experiences more. The spectator sees more. The participant is sometimes wrong: they experience only their own point of view. The spectator is also wrong sometimes: they don’t have responsibility, they can witness without risking anything, learn without suffering. But the two together – taking part and watching – maybe that’s what produces the true history of our lives.’

He paused again. Mistletoe had moved a little closer to him.

‘You’re saying that dreams are our rehearsal for life,’ said Mistletoe.

‘Like private plays.’

‘So plays we see in real theatres are private dreams shown in public?’

‘One person’s consciousness, read by the universe…’

‘Bearing witness to all of us.’

‘Maybe there’s a spiritual black box in us that is decoded when we die.’

‘So books should be lived to be read.’

‘And life should be dreamt to be lived.’

Lao laughed. ‘You’ve got me talking,’ he said. ‘What are you hiding? I feel like a bomb that’s been delicately defused. Where did you go? What are you trying to divert me from?’

‘Only from how much I love you,’ said Mistletoe, joining him in the pool of light.

They made their way back to the hotel through the gentle darkness of the town. Near the clock tower, a night-bird flew low overhead. The whirring of its wings reminded them of something ethereal, something they used to know but couldn’t now remember. They were a little tired.

In an obscure way they felt they were being initiated into a new reality. They had become fond of the night-town, and had made it a small part of themselves. They felt they had become part of the town too, part of its dreams. In the town’s black box would be recorded the fact that they had been there. They had breathed deeply there, and hadn’t merely passed through. They liked to think that its night would always recognise them.

Lao was struck by Mistletoe’s strangeness on her return from the place beyond the bridge. There was an alien sensuality about her, something new that awed and aroused him, even scared him a little. She seemed transformed. She seemed, in some way, magnified.

As they made their way back, breathing deeply the lake and mountain air, he kept glancing at her, but she was silent.

As Mistletoe dressed for bed she became aware of a change. Her mouth was dry, her breathing awkward, her heartbeat irregular. Her hands quivered lightly and she felt as if she had a mild fever. Curious colours swam in her eyes. She felt a little dizzy.

She slipped into bed, and listened to Lao’s breathing in the dark. A dark red heat poured from him. She noticed that he was lying heavier on the bed beside her.

When his hand brushed her nipple it tripped a switch and she came alight. He touched her belly and his hand seemed to burn through her. He lavished on her body indirect touches and bitter-sweet sensations flooded her brain.

She became aware of places in her that could only have been concealed there by a god with a sense of humour. Adrift on warm currents, no longer of this world, she became aware of him gliding into her. He loved her with gentleness and strength, stroking her neck, praising her face with his hands, till she was broken up and began a low rhythmic wail. She was a little overwhelmed with being the adored focus of such power, as he rose and fell. She felt certain now that there was a heaven and that it was here, in her body. The universe was in her and with each movement it unfolded to her.

Somewhere in the night a stray rocket went off. She must have been shouting, for his hand was cupping her mouth. Lost to all reason, she wanted to encompass him with beautiful obscenities.

She suddenly learnt surrender, and broke through all her barriers, and destroyed his control. In an ecstasy greater than his anguish, he raced towards her, and disappeared into her universe, and afterwards into a long dreamless slumber.

T
he alchemy of Arcadia worked on the group in unexpected ways. Malasso was one of those ways. Had they all created him? Was it true that he was a group entity? Whatever he was, they had empowered him. They endowed him with influence, nourished his personality, enriched his agency. They made him the deity of their journey. Through their fears, fantasies, secrets, and undefined creativity they made him a minor demiurge.

He grew with their breath. Their thoughts filled out his insubstantial form. Their desires were his gains. He acquired might from their floating dreams. Moving between two realms, he was both visible and invisible. Mirroring their blind alternation between dream and waking, thought and things, he became the master between
– the master they had brought with them. With their ungoverned wishes they gave him the key to their destinies on the journey.

Unwittingly they conferred on him the power to shape their stories: he could influence whatever happened to them as they travelled through the myth-charged spaces to Arcadia.

His powers grew as their thoughts intensified. Through them he was now clothed in pure energy. As they were, so was he. When they were negative, he grew; when elevated, he flew. He sowed mischief with their weakest thoughts; he amplified such thoughts, made them real, and gave each fantasy a form.