I Have Had a Most Rare Vision

My head broke through the surface of the pool. Light burned my eyes, making my vision swim. I gagged on the liquid, flailing around to grab onto something. Hands gripped mine and pulled me out of the pool in one swift motion. On my knees, I retched, throwing up cloudy blue fluid. It dripped out of my nose and leaked from my ears. I felt like a swollen sponge that had been squeezed, its contents spewing from every orifice.

“You have undergone the trial and emerged anew,” one of the Sisters said. The other Sister had begun sprinkling me with green powder. I coughed and wiped at my eyes, trying to orient myself.

“Is it over?” I asked, my voice hoarse.

“Nearly,” said the Sister who was sprinkling the powder. “Next, we will dry you off completely and have you step through the Cleansing Arch.”

I was brought a thick towel and used it to soak up every drop of liquid on my body. The green powder didn’t lift from my skin, even when I rubbed it with the tower. I found it off putting, but it was too late to do anything about it.

I was given new clothes to wear, though I was allowed to put on the undergarments I’d worn previously. The robes were similar in style to the green robes of the Brothers and Sisters, except these were dove grey and bore no coloured stripes.

We left the ice box that was the purification chamber and emerged into sunlight. I sighed as I felt the warmth in the air wrap around me. My sense of time had warped in the pool, so I was shocked to see that it was still day time and that, if my judgment of the sun was correct, I hadn’t been in the pool for very long.

“How long did that take?” I asked the Sisters.

“A few minutes,” one of the Sisters said.

I blinked. That was even shorter than I’d expected. Whatever had happened in the pool was similar to a very short dream, stretched out to feel like hours. I hummed, then asked. “What are your names, anyway?”

There was a pause and a wordless glance was exchanged between the two women.

“I am Hermia,” said one. Hermia’s face was long, more of an oval. Her eyes were honey brown and the bridge of her nose was dusted in freckles.

“I am Helena,” said the other. Helena’s face was round with wide set blue eyes. She had the same mouse brown hair as Hermia.

Their names rattled around in my skull as we walked down a path towards the Cleansing Arch. They were so familiar and were quite distinct from the rest of the names I’d heard in Wosurei. Then, like a switch had been flipped, it came to me.

“If I say A Midsummer Night’s Dream, does that mean anything to you?” I asked.

Both women frowned, then shook their heads. It might have been an act, I couldn’t be sure.

“What does it mean to you?” Hermia asked.

“Ah, it’s just an old story. I don’t know why I thought of it just now,” I said casually. I’d need to keep my ears open for anyone named Demetrius or Oberon. This was a solid piece of evidence that there had in fact been previous Seers from Earth and they’d been plucked out of the time stream anywhere within the last six hundred years.

There was a small grove of trees just behind the Eternity Temple. As we approached the middle, I realized the Cleansing Arch was two living trees, woven together. There was enough space beneath the two trees for ten horses to walk side by side. If I had to guess at what sort of trees made up the arch, I would have said they were redwoods for their sheer size alone.

Hermia and Helena stepped to the side and each gestured to the arch. I caught their meaning and walked beneath twin leviathan trees. There was a hum that rushed up from my feet to the crown of my head and left a buzzing in my ears. Sharp, brief bursts of heat popped across my skin where the green powder had been. I pushed back my sleeves to see that the powder had disappeared.

Hermia and Helena had walked around the arch, not under it as I had, and met me on the other side.

“The purification is complete,” Helena said. “You will now be brought to the Inner Sanctum.”

And so we set off again, now to some other part of the temple.

“Am I ever going to understand what that was?” I asked the Sisters, my tone laced with fatigue. “The pool, the powder, the trees?”

“It’s unlikely,” Hermia admitted.

“Much of the meaning is sacred knowledge, known only to a few,” Helena added.

First the palace and now the temple. Was there anyone here who knew what was going on? I was beginning to have doubts.

We entered the temple and I was struck by how bare it was. There were no paintings hanging from the walls, no ornamentation, and not a lot of furniture. It had enough hallways to rival the palace, though they were laid out in a more logical way and would sometimes even bear a sign. This way to the Mess Hall. That way to the Prayer Garden. The Inner Sanctum didn’t appear on any sign, however.

Whenever we would pass anyone, their conversations would die and their gazes would be averted. No one spoke around me, let alone to me. Hermia and Helena kept silent as we walked, so I adopted silence too. We went up and up, from one floor to the next. I hadn’t experienced such a potent desire for an elevator since the time I helped my friend move and her new place had only one, temporarily unavailable elevator.

At the very top of the stairs was a mural that wrapped around the entirety of the stairwell. The shock of colour and form seemed all the stronger given how bleak the rest of the temple was. Here the forms of people clutching fans leapt through clouds, each with a golden halo around their heads. It reminded me of the mural in my own room back at Sparrow Hall, with a style similar enough that I wondered if it might have been the same artist.

The staircase ended in a hallway that led into a dimly lit room.

Hermia and Helena stood next to the hallway and went no further.

“Well, I’d say thank you but ah, this has been an ordeal and frankly, I hope I never see either of you again,” I said.

Hermia and Helena said nothing, their faces blank masks. I turned and drifted down the hallway to my fate.