From The Sophia Secrets, a novel-in-progress
I woke up with my heart pounding, remembering a dream of Kali dancing, her long hair flying as she twirled around with her trident and sword, shaking the earth with the rhythmic beat of her feet.
As I came out of my slumber, I wasn’t sure where I was. Then as the pieces of myself fit back together, I remembered I was in the loft of a guesthouse where I lived in Maine.
Wind was whining through the pines. Tree branches lashed against one another, one scraping against the building. Waves pounded the shore, tumbling large stones, sounding like a percussion of bowling balls. Thunderclouds darkened the early morning sky. No rain as yet.
With an urgent sense that I had to out and search for something, I skipped my morning meditation, splashed water on my face, threw on my down jacket. The cold wind bit into my face. Ocean waves were cresting higher than I’d ever seen them in the short time I’d lived here. I imagined Poseidon rising out of the frothy sea.
A couple of miles away I pulled my Honda into Acadia National Park's Ship Harbor Trail parking area.
As I made my way down the now familiar pathway, thick with red spruce and pine, I could almost see forest nymphs hiding behind ferns and moss-covered rocks. Lichen hung from branches near a rocky grotto a perfect place for faeries dancing under full moon nights. Even in this howling wind, I thought I might catch a glimpse of the little folk in their lichen-covered veils and tiny pinecone hats.
A chipmunk scolded, interrupting my reverie. Next I stopped in front of a fallen tree, its dark root ball looking like a giant creature rising from the earth.
Slowly I continued down the narrow trail, my mind lingering on the uprooted tree. At the fork in the trail, I went to the right, along Ship Harbor inlet. It was an odd name, hardly big enough even for a tiny pirate galley to fit in the small cove where seagulls squawked and soared.
Ducks bobbed on the water as if oblivious to the storm. After the estuary where the river of the rising tide was rushing into the harbor, the surf pounded against the granite cliffs, splashing onto the trail, misting onto my face. I waited for a lull, then I scooted past and out to a ledge and into a sparse grove of red spruce.
There I stood still, waiting, smelling the salt air, watching the ocean churning. All at once my heart surged. A swell, that looked big as a tidal wave, rose threatening to engulf me. I backed away. The wave sailed on by, towards the adjacent bluff that jutted farther out than where I stood. There it crashed with a hollow “Boom!” and the spray rose like a geyser thirty feet into the air.
I was so mesmerized by the ocean’s drama that I didn’t notice the old woman right away. At least I assumed she’d been there looking at me when I finally did notice her. I sucked in air. I couldn’t figure out how she’d crept up so close to me without my noticing.
I hadn’t heard her or seen her, not even out of the corners of my eyes. It was as though she was a tree that suddenly shed its bark and now was standing before me, short, plump, with white hair in one long braid, and with bits of lichen dangling from her shawl.
When I took note of her, she pulled her shawl over her head. Strands of her silvery hair flew in the wind around the edge of the cloth. The cheeks of her oval-shaped face were red, from the cold wind, I supposed. Her gray-blue eyes, stony and deep, matched her stole.
She looked into me, way down inside of me it felt like, farther than I’ve ever been. I swallowed. What does she want? Why is she just standing there not saying anything?
The back of my neck prickled as we stared at each other, in the way I’d heard wolves do when they meet for the first time. Unnerved by her eyes and the over-all strangeness of her appearance, I glanced about for the quickest way around her and back to my car.
If the surf didn’t spray onto the path again, I aimed to escape by running around the spruce closest to the ledge. Even at age sixty-three, I was athletic and fairly speedy when the need arose.
She squinted, her eyes holding me fast. Her shawl blew off her shoulder, and then she flung it around herself again with the grace of a soaring eagle and in rhythm with the limbs of the trees that swayed in the wind. I didn't stand a chance against such grace. I looked at her again, hoping to find a clue, hoping I wouldn’t loose myself in her diamond blue eyes. I shivered and drew back. Who is she?
Then she beckoned with her chin. “Come,” she said. Her voice was mellow and raspy.
“Where?” I asked.
She pointed up into the gray sky. “We don’t have much time,” she said. “They’ll be here soon.”
“Who?”
She didn’t answer.
I felt caught in a rift between two worlds, wondered if I’d taken a wrong turn somewhere. Then, absently, for no apparent reason, I was drawn to touch the fibers of her stole. I wanted to find out if it was soft or hairy. She lifted her shawl and swung it back and forth, causing it to ripple in the wind and then graze my cheek. It felt like soft the weeds of spring. Her eyes seemed to laugh.
She knows I wanted to touch it. “Who are you?” I asked.
She said nothing. There was only the sound of the roaring sea and the whipping of wind through the firs. In many ways she looked just like any other Mainer on a stormy October day—wool pants, down parka. Only the shawl and the long braid were unique, and the beat-up, rubber-toed L.L. Bean boots with no laces.
“Couldn’t you tell me who you are?” I asked.
“You’ll find out in time,” she said with a slight grin.
One again she pointed towards the trail with her chin. I studied her face. Something about her looked familiar, like a character from a recurring dream. She gave me a sidelong glance and then turned to leave, motioning for me to follow.
An umbilical attachment tugged at me. The more I held back, the sharper the pain in my stomach. When she disappeared around a bend, I had to follow her. I was compelled like the tide pulled by the moon. I ran after her, along the path, past the cliffs, over reddish-tan boulders etched with nature’s abstract designs, and then down to the jagged shoreline. When she paused and I stopped behind her. I thought I knew where we were, but I wasn’t sure. We settled on a rock that seemed too close to the edge of the turbulent sea.
She bade me to look at the waves.
Some swells rose ten feet high and then crashed in a wrath of foam and spray. After a few minutes, a score of seagulls landed on rocks nearby, quiet, not pestering, just standing there. One by one, more gulls flew in, until there were twenty or so. And then I spotted several deer gathering at the forest’s edge, joined by a few raccoons that climbed onto boulders and sat, and then a dozen or more chipmunks huddled on limbs of trees. Why all the animals? The animals remained perfectly still, posed like sentinels and facing the sea.
Lulled by the rhythmic crash of the waves, my mind fell into a calm. And my body grew still and receptive as if I were in a meditation-trance. My lids grew heavy and I closed my eyes. And then soon, I was drawn to open them again.
Through the mist of a cresting wave, I spotted a gathering of black ducks. I’d seen them often, bobbing near the shore, but never so far out or in such large numbers. There must have been hundreds of them. Then I realized they were not black ducks, not black ducks at all. They were beasts and men, an army of demon-like warriors with spears and swords, wearing dark clothing, accompanied by boars, hairy horses, hyenas, and black tigers.
A pin-prickling sensation coursed through my body. I hunched down on my rock. The visions, elaborate dreams, and epic-like visual poems I’d seen in dreams, during waking hours, and during meditation had been nothing like this. I wondered if we should escape while there was time, but as I made to leave the old woman held fast to my hand, her fingers, like roots of a tree, binding me to the rock.
I turned to check if animals that had gathered were still there. I calmed when I saw that they held their positions, still as statues. I figured if they were watching the same phenomenon and had not fled from the scene, then I must be safe.
The old woman tugged at my hand and pointed with her chin toward the ocean. Once my eyes were fastened to the sea again, she let go of my hand.
Suddenly an inner buzzing, rapidly ascending in pitch, coursed through my head. The wind picked up into a gale.
Then the hair on my neck rose when, from behind a crashing wave, a brilliant light shone around a translucent figure that breeched like an orca out of the stormy deep. I rubbed my eyes and then opened them wide. A woman’s watery form, with seaweed-like hair tangling down to her waist, shimmered like sunlight on the waves, sometimes disappearing behind veils of mist cast by the thrashing sea. The ocean pursued it own wild course and so it was hard to tell exactly what I saw beyond the blinding light.
Then, as the figure danced over the water towards the marching army, her translucent shape filled out into a body of substance, as polished and shiny as black granite. She was both fierce and beautiful. And in my mind there was no mistaking who she was.
Suddenly an army of strong slender women appeared bearing maces, swords, and ropes. Kali and her warrior women waded through the frothing ocean swells towards the black men and beasts until they thundered into one another. Sparks from the clashing of weapons shot through the air like hundreds of shooting stars against the dark gray sky.
Kali’s red skirt and garland of human skulls swayed as she danced on the battlefield. She snapped the string on her bow, creating a resounding “Hum,” a rumble of distant thunder. She raised her trident and swung her curved sword over her head and tunneled her way towards a crowned, black-bearded man.
All the warriors on both sides of the armies stopped to watch Kali as she came near the demon king. Those two stopped and paused. Then, they lashed out, clashed their swords and shot their arrows and swirled around each other like two tornados. The wind caused by their fighting whistled in my ears with so much force that I had to cover them with my hands. Finally Kali laughed a with a mocking laughter, loud and deep. She pulled the string on her bow and shot the demon king in his chest. And then, leaping into the air, she severed his head with her sword.
The cheers of her warrior women sent shivers through my body.
Now Kali, shining like the moon through the mist, held high the head of the demon king and danced towards the shoreline, towards the rock where the old woman and I were perched. I shut my eyes. But I could hear Kali’s ankle bells jingle and her bare feet pound in rhythm with the jumbo pebbles that tumbled and clacked against each other as the waves rushed in and out.
When I opened my eyes again, I had to shade them from the light, like flames of a thousand temple lamps, that surrounded her. She bore no weapons now, nor the head of the demon king. And she was white, looking serene in the way I had imagined her sitting on her crystal-studded rock throne in the Himalayas, with light filtering through her hair, against a background of shaded mountains.
She unfolded her arms and raised them like a snowy egret’s wings and backed into the waves, disappearing into the foam, into the depths of the sea, and all the while, the spray from the sea swirled around me in a mist.
The wind calmed. The seagulls were squawking and taking flight, some soaring into the light beams that sliced through the edges of clouds, casting a silver glow on the water.
I looked over towards the several deer and they, too, were moving on, stepping away at first, and then with the whites of their tails flashing, they leap into the forest. The chipmunks had already retreated and I heard their sharp calls in the distance.
I didn’t know where the old woman was, but I had a sense she was standing nearby. Then I saw her, with her shawl askew, looking down at one of the raccoons that was digging for food next to a mossy lump at the base of a dead tree.
“There, now,” the old woman said to the raccoon, “you’ve found some morsels.”
On wobbly legs I wandered over to her and opened my mouth to speak but found no words.
“Nine come out of this one,” she said to me. “Each bears a secret.”
Wiping my brow, still wet from the ocean spray mixed with sweat, I stared at her, figuring she was referring to the ocean vision, but my mind was buried too deep inside myself to make much sense of her words.
“You’ll meet them all, one way or another,” she said as she pulled her shawl over her head.
I looked away, out at the sea again, perhaps for clues, perhaps to take in the design of the sun’s light through the clouds. Finally, when I'd found the words to express myself and turned to face her, the old woman had vanished.
