41. Clem September 21, 1888
Dear Mother,
I’ve returned in one piece. His name is Samuel May, the spirit who has guided me this last month, who is with me now as a thew.
It has been worthwhile, Mother, for he has found the case.
Vera will bring it to me. First we will expose the cisnes, and then I will come find you. It will be at the next Grand Séance.
I’m glad it will be soon, for my spirit feels heavy, Mother. So very heavy. It has since I went to the realm. Something happened to me there.
As we were returning, we walked along the mooring line.
You had told me that the passage would be difficult.
I thought it would be like everything else I’ve been told would be difficult.
Dead reckoning wasn’t difficult; enchantment itself felt easy, almost natural; even making Erauso with bone was simple.
But that has led me, I see now, to a false confidence.
For when I was on the mooring line, I suddenly thought: I can’t.
I am not able. I am not strong enough. Then I realized something terrible.
That all my conviction to do what I do in this world is illusory.
My confidence only exists because I believe it exists. It is not real.
How much that we hold dear is like this?
Existing only because we choose to believe in it?
Everything. Everything in our world is a mirage, Mother.
The knowledge we think we possess, the high regard of others, even the love that we believe binds us.
All of it exists only because we believe it exists.
And so nothing, nothing, truly exists without that willful deception.
I cannot make myself believe something. It’s impossible.
I can want to believe, but I can’t force the belief.
There is no mooring line here. I have nothing to hang on to.
I know you and Rosetta are counting on me, but the urgency I felt before is gone.
Though I am here, back among the living, I look about me and see only the gray expanse of the spirit world.
It seems to me that this world is false, an illusion conjured to conceal the real world, the truth of a world filled infinitely with death.
I don’t belong here. I can’t shake the sense that we all belong there.
Perhaps when I return with you to undo the binding, I will stay there with you.
We move forward. Expect me on the day of the séance.
Your loving,
Clem