Chapter 18
I am in a chamber that is unlike any place I’ve ever seen before.
It is dark all around except for the center, which pulses with light from a ring of a dozen brilliant burning torches.
They surround a pentagram drawn on the floor in white and blue chalk.
I see now why the book called it a flaming pentagram.
The massive torches are the only light source in the room and greatly illuminate the center; but the edges of the chamber, where the light doesn’t reach, are so dark that I cannot make out any walls.
This creates the illusion that the flaming pentagram is rising out of an abyss.
He sits on the pentagram, robed and hooded, with his back to me. Before him, a podium bears a heavy book. The flames cast dancing shadows all around him.
He doesn’t turn around. I’m not sure he knows I am here. I open my mouth to call out to him, then suddenly the door falls shut behind me. I startle. From the inside, it doesn’t even look like a door. I don’t discern any handles. I am puzzling over this when I hear his voice.
“Don’t come any closer.” He speaks without turning around.
“I-I apologize,” I stammer, unsure what I am apologizing for. I feel foolish. My voice sounds nervous and out of place. What makes me think he even wants me here? “I don’t mean to disturb you, it is only that I…couldn’t sleep. I had troubled dreams.”
What a flimsy explanation for why I came here, having gone to such lengths to find him in the middle of the night.
“Your dreams are a window into your subconscious,” he says. His voice sounds deeper than it was last night. “What did you dream?”
“I don’t remember.”
He is still. I bite the corner of my lip.
“This is not your mother’s house or your church,” he says, still not turning around. “This is not a place where you pretend to be someone else. This is a sacred place, a place where you become your true self. You have no need to lie here. So speak the truth. What did you dream?”
“I dreamed that a beast came to my bedside.”
“A beast?”
“Like a demon from the underworld. It had reptilian scales, a forked tail, claws, lidless eyes.” I pause. “It climbed into bed with me.”
“Were you afraid?”
“No…” I pause. “I welcomed it.”
At this, he finally rises to his feet. He turns around and regards me. I feel the beam of his gaze, appraising me.
“Come forth.”
I feel as though I’ve passed a test. Perhaps the test was simply to tell the truth.
I step toward the center of the room, the ring of fire encircling the pentagram.
My eyes are drawn to the radiant blaze, while the edges of the room are indiscernible, dark and fluid.
In my peripheral vision, something moves deep in the shadows.
I shift my attention away from the firelight and look where I thought I saw movement.
But I can make out nothing but darkness. I must have imagined it.
I approach the flaming pentagram. I feel the warmth of the flames on my skin, and discern a faint scent of copal.
From up close, I realize the pentagram covers a wider area than I thought.
There are drawings carved between its straight lines, alchemical symbols of sulfur, salt, lead, and mercury.
At the center, a kabbalistic cross bears a rose and an entwining serpent.
I saw this pentagram in the book, two side by side, one with a circle around it and the other without. This pentagram has no circle around it.
From here I can also make out a table past the podium, shrouded in shadows. It lies beyond the light, where the flames cannot reach.
“What does it mean?” I ask. “The dream?”
His eyes shine like obsidian gems. “It means that you are ready.”
A frisson runs through my body.
He steps over to the podium. He picks up a golden dagger, which sat beside the large open book, and a cloth. I remember seeing a depiction of a golden dagger in the book. It was called a ceremonial dagger, said to be used to banish or invoke spirits.
“What is this?” I ask.
He steps around the torches, toward me. He’s carrying the dagger and the cloth.
“An invocation ritual.”
“What is that?”
He comes very close to me. I meet his eyes, and he watches me for a moment.
“The forces of the outside world have no power here,” he says. “They will fall away once you step into the flaming pentagram. You will then know yourself, and you will know your heart’s desire. That’s why you’ve come, isn’t it?”
Movement in the corner of my eye. I turn in the direction of it, but in the far-flung corners of the room there is only darkness.
“Are we alone here?” I ask.
“Yes.” He starts unfurling the cloth. “Let the ancient spirits guide you.”
He starts wrapping this cloth around my eyes, blindfolding me. It is a thin, semi-sheer fabric, and I can still see the outline of his body and the glow of the torches to my left. Everything else is blurry.
“Before you enter the flaming pentagram, you must release the old you.”
“How?”
“I’ll show you.”
He takes me by the hand and guides me forward. I feel the heat of the flames, and see their glow pass me by on my left. We move past the podium. The flames are behind us. I remain oriented, and I know when we reach the table behind the podium. It is cool and dark. The blindfold seems unnecessary.
He lifts my hand and presses an object to my palm. I close my fingers around it and find it is smooth and round at the edge. The handle of the ceremonial dagger.
He stands close to me on my right side.
“What lies before you is an effigy of you,” he says. “This ritual effigy is a wax and mud doll that represents the old you, the one called Madalena. It symbolizes your past, your attachments, the identity assigned to you. Raise the dagger to it.”
I reach for it with my free hand. I feel the upward tip of the doll’s nose, lips, then my hands pull outward slightly, and I feel the straw-like texture of the doll’s hair.
I raise the dagger with both hands. I conjure to mind all my life’s attachments, the old me, which is inseparable from the world around me.
Then I think of Leandro and his rejection of the baby.
I think of Mother and her threat to take the baby away from me.
I feel nothing but spite for all of them, and I bring the dagger down, furiously, again and again.
I want to be free, and now I’m starting to feel an inkling of freedom. The scent of copal makes my head buzz.
Breathless, I spin around to face him. He whispers words I don’t understand, but there is a music to them, a resonance.
His hand caresses my cheek and brushes my lips, then lingers there for a moment.
I close my eyes. I can feel that he is looking down at me, though I cannot see him.
I instinctively reach toward my face to remove the blindfold, but he stops me.
“No,” he says.
I follow him back to the edge of the flaming pentagram. I stand on the outer perimeter of it, feeling the blaze on my skin. It is so bright. I hear his voice: a soothing, low chant in some other tongue. He stands on the outside, too, waiting for me.
I step inside. My feet touch the chalky, warm surface of the pentagram. The flames rise all around me, engulfing me in a vortex. I am the light rising out of the abyss. I am the ancient spirit who has been invoked. I spin around, laughing, free as a newborn. I know what I want.
I stretch my hand toward him.