Tremendous Universe

I've been having the same dream ever since I became Xu's apprentice at the Southern Temple.  It happens at odd moments, whether I'm awake or asleep.  The world melts into stormy blue and wet.  I get caught up in a silent, spinning wind.  Abstract visions come streaming by me in torrents.  I keep reaching out, trying to grasp at one--any one, just so I might be anchored to something nearly tangible.  It's not the full feeling I get when I imagine floating in outer space without a tether.  This is something else.  It makes me sick to the stomach.  My tongue froths but I can't swallow.

My mentor slipped her backpack over the shoulders and reached up to gather her braids into a single knot atop her head.  Her over-sized pants and heavy work boots made her willowy frame seem dainty, even though she was taller than I.  She tossed a slight smile my way when I ran out of words, while trying to explain.
"Something slippery and acrid wells up inside you?"

After a thoughtfully startled pause, I smiled at her.
"Exactly."

We'd just left the cottage that sheltered by the trees at the edge of the mountains.  While we walked through the woods, I marveled at how perfectly she understood.  She was going down into the valley where the grass grew tall and sweet, to harvest a rare root.  I'd insisted on going with her.

"What's that sound?"
Her head tilted curiously, in response to my sudden question.
"I don't hear anything out of the ordinary."
I blinked.  "You hear this all the time?  How can you stand it?"

She shrugged and kept walking.  I wondered why she neither answered nor asked me to elaborate.  It was strange.  It don't remember ever being so close to nature before.  We were surrounded by greenery and the deep smell of dirt.

"It's amazing, being in the woods like this," I switched subjects deftly, more out of habit than anything else.  "This fog is so thick, I can barely see two steps ahead.  Only rainy days were like this in the city."

The thick band of mist was needling its way through the forest.  It snaked around the waistlines of the trees.  It curled up out of the bramble that laid underfoot, tickling my nostrils.  Xu stopped in her tracks.  She looked to the sky, shielding her eyes.

"It's wild," I murmured, following the sweeping arc of her gaze.  "The sun is so bright and there's not a solitary cloud in sight but I can only see over the tops of the trees."
"It didn't occur to you to mention this until now?"
I frowned, confused by her bemused tone.  "Why would I?"
"Go back," Xu ordered, to my chagrin.  "Don't come into the valley today."
"Why?"

She turned.  The breeze stirred up a chain of leaves from the ground, they twirled around her body, performing a jittery, synergistic ballet.  Counter-clockwise, I noted.  For some inexplicable reason, that didn't seem quite right.  Her eyes were glimmering pools of ice and obsidian.  I was always so struck by them.  Once again, she took my breath away without even trying.  I almost didn't hear her quiet murmur.

"I don't see it."
"What?"
"The mist.  I don't see it."
"But it's right here.  It's everywhere."
"Must be an artifact," she mused.  "You and I are most likely, on two different mountains."
Now it was just raw anxiety, welling up inside me.
"That doesn't make any sense, at all."

Impatience flared in Xu's eyes but then, she steadied and gave me her customarily unperturbed smile.
"Go back to the cottage and wait for me there.  I'll explain later.  We're already behind schedule, as it is."

She sidestepped me, plowing forward before I could object.  Shaken, I hesitated a fraction of a second too long.  Xu was swallowed up by the blinding whiteness in an instant.  Caught between vague relief and disappointment, I did as she'd instructed.

As I trudged back down the slope to wait for her to return, the mountain moaned again.  Even though the only thing that filled my ears was the wind, a gonglike resonance floated up from deep in the earth and filled me with both awe and dread.  It's more like I felt it in my bones than heard it but it was definitely a sound.  That's the only word I could think of, to describe it.  I would have felt like an idiot for saying that earlier, so I hadn't.

Next to Xu's cottage, was a deceptively shallow pond.  While waiting for her to return, I knelt to peer down into its shimmering depths.  I closed my eyes momentarily, semi-submerging my face in the cool wetness.  I opened my eyes--the furious blinking was a reflex I hadn't quite learned to suppress.  Once the initial sting on my eyeballs was gone I searched again, for the ever elusive source of those lights below.  I grinned with glee when I saw a luminous slug crawling along the bottom, its puffy body suffused with golden light.  I watched its slow progress from the edge to the middle.  At the center of the bottom of the pond, was a perfect replica of Xu’s cottage.  On the day I came to live with Xu, she'd been astonished that I was able to see it -- the spectral abode of a certain nameless and indiscriminate deity.  There were tiny marbles of many colors scattered along the bottom of the pond, surrounding the tiny temple.  Xu had warned me to be careful not to touch the ones that were indigo and red.

"There is such a thing in this world, as prayers that do harm," was all she'd said.