It was a short distance away from Myriddian’s stone house, down a path that was invisible. It was not that it was overgrown, though the ground path itself was only about a foot and a half across, but that it was not meant for anyone’s eyes but Myrridian. He was holding Goldach against his chest, with Goldach looking backwards over his left shoulder at the forest they left behind them. When they arrived at the clearing, Myrridian set him down and let him walk the area.
There was a hot spring pool in the circumferential clearing, and though the entire space was surrounded by the dense oak forest, there were specifically thirteen oaks that demarcated it as a holy and hidden place. In the center of the pool was a green copper statue of a mermaid laying leisurely on a clam shell, and playing a harp that looked exactly like Myrridian’s.
Being here with Goldach, Myriddian began to have the experience he was hoping for. The memory had been lost to him, almost as if it were covered over by layers of dust. There was a flood of remembrance now that washed all that dust away.
Myriddian was young, but a little older than Goldach was now. His master Aurelian had brought him here, he realized now as a sanctifying ritual. This was his most powerful ritual space, and even then, the mermaid at the center of the pool glowed and seemed alive and yet timelessly ancient, as if beckoning with a call older than time itself. It had brought little Myriddian comfort to see her, the comfort of remembrance and familiarity.
Aurelian had spoken to him then, in a voice so open, tenderhearted, and out of character that Myriddian would have been frightened to hear it in years to come.
“You know, dear Myrridian my boy, we have been here before,” he said. Myriddian replied then,
“Yes, Master, I remember building this place, and putting her here to guard it,” Myriddian replied, smiling and pointed at the mermaid. “Her name is Atargis,” he said further. His master Aurelian’s countenance changed when Myriddian said that he constructed this sanctum; for all these years Aurelian had the distinct feeling that he had been the one. The innocence of a child however, could not be debated with, especially when he remembered the mermaid’s name.
Aurelian had spent many long hours having conversation with the spirit of the statue, prior to this day, and she had indeed asked him to refer to her as Atargis. When the child Myrridian spoke these words, he had a flood of visions. There were ancient civilizations with untold knowledge, sunk forever under the waves. The immortality of the soul and the relativity of the human reckoning of time became more distinct and concrete. Aurelian wanted to ask Myrridian more questions, but was almost embarrassed to. This caused a rift between them that was never really healed.
Myrridian realized today, standing here with this child, that the rift he had been raised with was not new and had not been for an infinitude. There was an opportunity here for forgiveness, but the depth of the loathing he felt for Goldach rose to the surface in an undeniable way. He pushed it back down, and saw the boy as a boy again.
Goldach was playing, walking around and touching all the trees on the periphery and talking to them in nonsense. It sounded like babbling to Myrridian, but it felt like something more. As he turned his ear toward the interaction, he could hear the birds in the trees, the frogs, and all of nature responding to Goldach. The oak trees themselves seemed to be welcoming him back, as if he had only been gone for a day. With their infinite forgiveness they wanted to inspire Myrridian. He would think about it.
It was humorous to Myrridian that Goldach avoided Atargis, the centerpiece of this sanctified ritual place. It was as if he remembered that he did not want to remember, focusing on what he knew best, mother Nature Herself. As Myrridian thought this thought, a toad about the size of the child’s fist hopped from a cooler side pool of the main one and began to croak, calling to him. Goldach ran from the tree he was talking to, smiling and laughing, got on the ground, eye to eye with this toad, and began to carry on a private and silent conversation with it, nodding every once in a while. After a two minute span of this passed, Goldach carefully picked up the toad, rose from his position, belly down on the ground, and placed the toad in the front pocket of his burlap tunic.
He then saw the statue of Atargis and began to cry. He sat down on the ground and wept silently to himself, looking at the copper statue, with the steam rising up from the hot pool around her. He cried silently to himself for five minutes, then took the frog out of his pocket and held him eye-level. He looked into the frog’s eyes then set him down on the ground in front of him.
When Goldach had looked at the mermaid statue, a flood of communication came through to him, in the form of pictures. There were layers upon layers of lifetimes, and the spirit of Atargis had represented the very beginning, of all of this. It was the fall of humanity eulogized in the Jewish bible, the moment of Earth’s history when humans began to know what it meant to be enslaved. Goldach saw himself, standing over an unconscious person, laying supine on a table. He was not a he, but a she, waving a crystal instrument over the person. There were people of authority looking on, supervising the event; her partner was a stoic man in the corner, standing silently and directing energy. The patient writhed and moaned as the session continued. This was the genesis of the first disease on Earth, a successful attempt by one group to enslave another. This was Atlantis, the beginning of the end; incomprehensible emotions flooded his body, and Goldach turned away from what he saw. It was too much for his young mind to handle, and he begged Atargis to stop.
“Ask your friend to help you, Goldoc,” said Atargis. He saw the frog in his mind’s eye. Removing it from his pocket, he spoke to him telepathically.
“Can you make it stop?” He asked the frog, looking deeply into his eyes. The frog did not speak in coherent thought, but Goldach suddenly knew her name was Ceres, and the feelings he was experiencing began to subside. He then knew to put the frog down, as she had all that she could take.
