Portals to the Vision Serpent
Chapter Three
At night before he went to bed, Preston had marked the moon’s cycles and felt an undercurrent of expectancy, barely contained. Mama Luna had kept a nightly vigil in the garden as well, and the loom continued to rest. The two of them shared an unspoken pact as though they were waiting for something to break. Preston wondered if Sybilla had detected the strain of excitement galvanizing the household because, instead of rushing off on far-flung assignments, she stayed home. Periodically, Preston noticed her contemplating him with a fine eye. Other times, she scrutinized Mama Luna going about her daily activities, perhaps trying to tease out something in her actions. For the first time ever, instead of longing intensely for his mother to be there with him, Preston had wished her gone for a while.
Finally, she did go. The assignment to Norway came suddenly, probably too good to turn down. She threw some clothes in a suitcase and left, after giving him a perfunctory kiss on the head and some short instructions to Mama Luna. The moon was waxing. In two nights’ time it would be full.
That will be when time is best, he thought to himself. For some reason, he chose to remain silent about this secret thing. Even though he had no clue what the “best time” was about, he knew it was well revealed to both Mama and Smoky but equally unspoken.
If you speak about some things, they lose their power. Smoky gave him this advice some time ago.
“Why, Smoky?” He hadn’t quite been able to figure out that one.
It’s natural to want to share with your friends. But sometimes people don’t understand some things, particularly things they can’t see with their eyes. Or things that don’t make sense to them. It scares them and they don’t like to be afraid.
Preston stared, his lips forming a perfectly round “o.”
“Like when I tried to tell Mom about you?”
That would be one example.
After Smoky started keeping him company, Preston wanted to share his new friend. He had asked his mother if he could invite him to lunch. She set a place for Preston’s guest at the table. But when no flesh-and-blood little boy showed up, yet Preston carried on a lively conversation toward the chair across the table, her brows knitted in confusion. After a while, a slight smile began to play around her mouth. Later he overheard his mother on the telephone to one of her co-workers.
“I wish you could have seen it! It was the cutest thing! PJ jabbering away to an imaginary playmate!” His mother’s friend must have had something to say on the matter. “Do you think I should worry about him? His father had problems, you know.”
His ears had pricked up at mention of his father, but indignation overcame his curiosity. Smoky wasn’t imaginary. He also felt a little ashamed, like there was something wrong with him. So he decided not to ever mention Smoky, even when his mother said to invite his friend to lunch again. He didn’t want her to laugh at him. He longed to tell her everything in his small life. But, from that point on, there were some things he made the decision to withhold.
The day his mother left for Norway was a Saturday. Preston had felt liberated. To express it, he played really hard in the back yard, running and jumping straight up in the air, pretending his feet had springs. Indeed, it felt like he could leap right up into the sun. He talked Smoky into a sword fight. Smoky called it “fencing.” Their implements looked different, too.
Preston made his sword about a month before during arts and crafts at school. It had a wide cardboard blade and handle. He’d glued aluminum foil over the blade and sprinkled glitter on the hilt. Not too much. It didn’t stay glued anyway. Every time he held the shaft some of the glittery stuff came off on his hands. One time he must have accidentally smeared some on his face because his mother noticed and proclaimed it fairy dust. He liked the idea that his sword was magical. He remembered the story about King Arthur. The magic rubbed off on him, just like the fairy dust, and made him wise. Preston relished knowing things other people didn’t. After all, he had Smoky advising him on how to notice things, and Mama Luna confided offhand tidbits.
When Preston ran circles around Smoky jabbing the air with his sword, Smoky gave his own arm a sharp shake. A long band of vibrating light emerged from the end of a finger. Preston thought in terms of Smoky having arms and fingers, but it wasn’t really like anyone else’s. It was more that he could see with his inner vision. Smoky’s blade, though, he could make out clearly as throbbing luminous pixels. Smoky had allowed Preston to thrust and yell until apparently he had enough. Then he took laser-like aim with the light particles, and tapped the spot where Preston’s hand met the shaft. The sword inexplicably flew out of his grasp and arced over to land several feet away. Astounded but gleeful at the challenge, Preston retrieved his weapon and charged back to win the day. Several times these events repeated themselves until he was just plain worn out.
Red-faced and sweaty with play, Preston huffed and puffed, “How do you do that, Smoky?”
Instead of running and expending his vitality needlessly, a true warrior becomes still. Then he can tell where the openings are for things to go his way. That’s when he acts because he knows the truth of his action.
“That’s what I want to be! A true warrior!” Preston beamed and waved his own finger in the air with half a hope that light would project.
“Solocito!” He heard Mama Luna calling him to dinner, sticking her dark head out the back door. When he came tearing into the house with a last bit of rambunctious energy, she laughed and exclaimed how stinky he was from his hot play. At least that was the gist of what he understood her to say. But she allowed him to sit at the table with her anyway and fed him his favorite meal: franks and beans mixed with some yellow mustard, carefully sprinkled with sweet pickle relish, and tater tots on the side.
After dinner she bustled him off to take a bath, ignoring his loud protestations. It was their way of joking. With his mother, he’d learned to be quiet most of the time. She usually seemed to have something on her mind.
“Very important tonight for you to take your bath, Solocito!” Mama nodded knowingly at him and closed the door to give him his privacy.
“Oh,” he peeped. A light bulb went on. He quickly discarded his clothes and submerged himself in the warm water. He thought briefly about playing frogman, but it seemed bathing had taken on a new significance based on Mama’s words. So, instead, he dutifully soaped himself and made sure all parts of himself were sweet-smelling and clean. By the time he had emerged from the now dark-ringed bathtub, he felt the effects of his earlier exertion, a full belly and freshly scrubbed body.
When he came back into the kitchen, Mama Luna was cleaning up the dinner dishes. She took one look at his sleepy eyes and said, “To bed now, Solocito?”
He went through his usual beefing, “Not now, Mama! It’s too early! Just a little longer!” Although it was half-hearted and his young body just wanted to lie down, it seemed necessary for him to make the usual show.
Mama Luna nodded knowingly again at him and intimated, “Good for you to sleep now.” She appeared to be letting him in on an open secret, and he allowed her to bundle him off to his room.
Preston wondered if the “best time” was imminent. He was intrigued. But his eyes closed almost before his head hit the pillow. He was in a hard sleep when a gentle shaking of his shoulder brought him slowly back to consciousness.
“Solocito. Chan K’in. Solocito,” Mama Luna was sitting on his bed steadily trying to wake him.
He said something unintelligible as he struggled to open one eye, and then seeing that it was still dark, he whined, “Oh, Mama! It’s too early!”
“Chan K’in. Chan K’in,” she chanted softly, refusing to go away.
His eyes suddenly snapped open with a realization that Mama Luna was waking him because it must be the “best time.” And she was calling him something he’d never heard before.
“Why are you calling me that name, Mama?” He sat up.
“This is your True Name, Chan K’in. Come. I tell you.”
As he got out of bed, he glanced out the window and noted that the moon was high in the sky. He felt a thrilling inside: fear and excitement at the same time. He pulled on some clothes. Something big was about to happen.
Preston joined Mama Luna where she waited in the hall. In the dark, they made their way through the house and out into the back yard without speaking. There, Mama paused for a moment, standing still, her face turned up to the nearly full moon. He did the same. A beautiful, shimmering, silvery light encased everything, and if Preston wasn’t mistaken, himself included. He had a sense that Smoky was off at a distance, to witness what was about to take place, not to participate.
Presently Mama began to move again, with Preston close behind, headed toward her garden. Once there, she stopped.
Looking down at her own bare feet as well as his, she whispered, “Is good. Is good for feet to touch the earth.”
Preston nodded silently. It seemed to be the thing to do — to be very quiet. He knew it was about respect and being able to hear. Mama had told him one time.
“It is good to play and laugh. And sometimes it is good to say nothing. Even inside your head. There are those who come to tell you things. If you are loud, you cannot hear them.”
That made sense to Preston. As her words came back to him, he recognized this might be one of those times to listen.
Mama entered her garden, and he followed her down the neat rows. She led him to the back where the tall plant stood. Earlier he thought he’d caught a whiff of something. As they got closer, he saw smoke rising steadily. There was a pungent sweetish smell that affected him in a way he would later be unable to describe. When they arrived at the small clearing, he was struck by how it was changed beyond what he saw in daylight. The tall plant wasn’t only the guardian, looking out over the tops of the others, but it was also the central focus. There was a wide-mouthed earthen pot on the ground close to the Tall One, as Preston named the plant. The container had a rounded belly and flattened bottom, and a simple face with an open mouth carved on the outside. The source of the smudge was inside the pot. Mama Luna saw Preston gazing curiously.
“This is a god pot,” she pointed to its wide opening, “You see gods have open mouths. In respect, we feed them. They like some things we have. Without us to help them, they cannot eat. We burn the copal they like. The pom, we call it. It invites the spirits. They come and fill the empty place inside. They give us what we need, too.”
Preston nodded slowly, perplexed. He caught a disturbance in the air, a little swirl descending into the clay vessel.
“Come, sit.” Mama patted a woven cloth placed on the ground. Preston took in his environment and decided that she must have carefully prepared this open-air room earlier in the night. It was special. Mama Luna sat cross-legged on the mat beside him, her regal back straight. It was then Preston noticed she had on one of her own creations, a roomy over-shirt that reached to mid-thigh and a much longer, brightly colored skirt, not her usual attire. Her face gleamed bronze, as if she called on the moon to show off her peaceful radiance, its light to glance off her high, rounded cheekbones, flat sloping forehead and flared nostrils. Preston thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, maybe even more than his mother. Mama Luna looked like royalty, yet had a softness that made him feel safe and sheltered.
She took his smaller hand in hers and loosely held it in her lap as they sat together, warm anticipation hanging soundlessly in the air. Finally, she looked down at him with a gentle smile and began to speak.
“I first saw you. You remember. Down in my home. I see what is waiting there,” she paused for a moment and then continued. “I see this in you. But you have no one to open it and to guard your opening. I know you have him,” Mama reverently bowed her head in the direction where Smoky watched over the proceedings. “You need one on this side, too. Your mama not know how. Your mama is a good woman and she is also scared. I see this.”
Preston listened carefully, solemnly drinking in everything Mama Luna said. He wondered what this seeing was, and thought it might have to do with Smoky and how his mother couldn’t make him out.
“This thing you have is special. I know. I have it, too. This thing must be opened a little at a time with the help of those who know. This is a gift from your father.”
At the mention of his father, Preston’s eyes quickly begin to fill. Mama Luna noticed and squeezed his hand. As tears spilled over and ran in rivulets down his cheeks, Preston’s voice quavered, almost inaudibly, “Mom says something was wrong with my dad. Is something wrong with me?”
Mama had turned and taken both his shoulders in her hands. She put her face squarely in front of his. “Ah, no, my brave one! Everything right with you! I think maybe your papa had no one to guard him. It was not his fault. It is not your mama’s fault. She does not come from people who understand these things.”
Preston wiped his eyes. She had released him and looked away. Staring into the copal smoke, she was somewhere else, in another place, another time.
“Everyone is born with this gift. Some have more. I think maybe your papa had it much,” she looked down at him for a brief second and then returned to the other place. “But for most people here, it goes away for a long time. Does not grow. Things take over from that world over there.” She waved her hand in the direction of the housing subdivision where they lived.
Indeed, all the houses nearby did seem to be a separate world. Preston had no interest in anything else and kept his face turned toward the Tall One, and the vapors coming from the god pot.
“These things that take over make the vision sharp. It makes things one way or another way, black or white. People here don’t know that to see the vision must be soft. They think that soft is bad and get eyeglasses. All those people that got eyeglasses young, they have this gift very strong but don’t know it. The spirits try very hard with these people. But with these eyeglasses? They take the seeing vision away.”
Somehow, this all made perfect sense to Preston.
“Here, as people get older, they began to know that things aren’t just this way or that way. They have enough of that world over there to want to know something more. For your people, this begins when they are sometimes forty years. That’s when their eyes start getting soft. The spirits are getting louder.” Suddenly, Mama turned to him and chortled, “And what do these people do, my Chan K’in? They get eyeglasses! And again they cannot see!”
This fact seemed such a huge joke that they broke out in peals of laughter. Realizing it was in the middle of the night and lights might start coming on next door, Preston tried to stifle his giggles.
“Is okay, my Chan K’in! The gods, they like the laughing, too, and they eat it.”
Sure enough, for all the noise they were making, the sound waves were funneling themselves into the god pot. Outside their small space was nothing but stillness. Not even a dog had barked.
Mama turned serious again. “Once my people, the Hach Winik — the True Ones — all see. Some much more, some less. But all had at least a little of this way of knowing. These things were honored. But a long time ago, those from outside began to come. First just a little. Some called themselves ‘God-men.’ I think this is not true that they were ‘God-men.’ They did not respect our ways so much. Some did. But these did not say they were ‘God-men.’ They did not tell us our ways were bad. They wanted to learn about us.
“Then more and more come. Many want to take our way of life. They want the trees, the jungle. These things are not ours, but these people want us to sell what is not ours,” Mama continued, “They don’t understand we cannot do this. They come and take. These trees, this land is not theirs either. Hachäkyum, Our True Lord, made the earth strong. He made these trees to keep the sky raised. He made these trees, too, to separate our world from Yalam Lu’um, the Underworld. When these people cut trees, stars fall in the night. And Yalam Lu’um gets darker, too. These people don’t care. They take so many trees. Soon the sky of Hachäkyum will be falling on us. And we fall on Yalam Lu’um. The worlds go away. The Hach Winik die. These people don’t give us a way of living, and the ‘God-men’ say our gods are not real. They bring things from their world, that world out there.” Once again Mama waved her hand in the direction of the houses.
“My people have less and less. They want something. They are confused and feel bad. These ‘God-men’ have medicines and food. They say they want to help. But they say to give up our gods. How can we give up what makes our world? What sends the rain and grows the corn? But many begin to follow these new ways and say our gods have left us. Their children must eat. Now many of these with new ways wear eyeglasses. They lose their seeing. They forget to feed the gods,” she finished sadly. Preston found his eyes wanting to cry again at the lamentable story of the Hach Winik.
“But you, my Chan K’in! You are one in your people who has this gift! You did not lose it. You made yourself safe from many of those who would take it away from you. Your Smoky help you with this. I see that there is hope in you. This is why I have come. This is why I have left my people and come here,” she continued and made the same emphasis as before, “These things must be opened carefully and used with wisdom. Now is the start of the best time. You will claim the name that has been inside waiting for you.”
“Is this Chan K’in, Mama?”
“This is so. Little Sun. You see and this is the great gift. When you call this special name of yourself, the sun will shine where you want to see.”
©2013 Carla Woody. All rights reserved worldwide. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be directed to: Kenosis Press, P.O. Box 10441, Prescott, Arizona 86304. Email: info@kenosis.net.
Find links to all chapters as they are published in the Table of Contents below.
Table of Contents
Preston
Sybilla
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Preston
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Also by Carla Woody:
Standing Stark: The Willingness to Engage. Read in Illumination Book Chapters.
Calling Our Spirits Home: Gateways to Full Consciousness. Read in Illumination Book Chapters.
Navigating Your Lifepath: Reclaiming Your Self, Recapturing Your Vision. A Program to Revolutionize Your Life. Find in Illumination Book Chapters.
