Elders' Valley

"There weren't always dragons in The Valley. I remember when the bartenders and bouncers held the line against those giant glowing serpents at the compound wall, armed to the teeth and marked head to toe with elder spells. You never saw a fight like that"

"Neither have you, Medabo. That's your last whiskey."

"You bartenders’re always drying a man out. Good. I'm quitting this stuff tonight anyway." Medabo slugged back the last mouthful in his quartz glass, then slammed it on the counter to make the crystal ring. "I got a plan."

"You know the rules. Don't go downstairs to do something stupid." Ibin, one of the older bartenders, scooped up Medabo's glass and plunged it into a suds-filled sink behind the ebony counter that extended the full length of the bar. No one was ever sure how the bartenders got behind the counter since there were no openings, but the bar was always fully stocked and fully staffed. The Valley Tavern, hewn into the dark stone core of one of the mountains in the Obsidian range, was Medabo’s favorite place. He slowly swiveled around and stood from his stool at the bar and leaned to his left. Plunging headlong through a small crowd that had formed nearby, patrons quickly lifted their drinks and dodged out of his way as he headed toward the door to the lower level. His bare feet patting noisily against the black stone floor, Medabo stumbled into the broad, dark, bald man who guarded the door. The doorman said nothing and rested his palm gently on Medabo’s forehead. The doorman’s words rumbled against Medabo’s bones. “Enter the elder’s valley. Accept their truth and offer nothing in return.”

Medabo had heard the doorman’s admonition many times before, but he remained silent each time to respect the doorman’s responsibility. The doorman lifted his thick hand from Medabo’s head, then turned to the door with no handle or hinge behind him and pressed it at its center. The door fell away into a pile of azure dust. Medabo stepped across the threshold as the dust began to coalesce behind him. The floor where Medabo stepped rippled beneath his footfalls, and sound whistled into the air with each ripple he formed. His bare feet felt cool as he walked slowly to the center of the space into a circle of stones. There, he knelt and held out both hands, his palms upturned. He closed his eyes and parted his lips to speak just as he felt a hand rest on his shoulder. Ibin’s voice caressed Medabo’s senses, making him feel a warmth that washed over his entire body. “I can help you kick this habit in another way. Your answer may not be here.”

“Everyone’s gone. Every…thing is gone. You saw my last coin come across the counter upstairs. I can convince myself to never take a drink, to never sneak swigs from my grandfather’s bottles. This has to work. It’s all I have.” The words quivered between trembling lips as Medabo extended his upturned hands further in front of himself.

“I’ll stand with you. To see you along your way. An elder will be here soon.”

As he spoke, ringlets rippled in the floor, a curve rising and elongating at its center. The elongating form shimmered in the haunting blue-white light of the elder’s valley; a light from nowhere that shone everywhere. The form coalesced into the body of a short brown man with woolen silver hair and a smooth face. Draped in a soft white tunic, pants with hems that exposed his ankles, and a short rod in his hand, Medabo and Ibin knew this to be an Elder.

The Elder spoke barely above a whisper, knowing how deeply the living felt his words in this place. “We accept nothing that you offer in emptied hands. Heart emptied of worry and fear, mind emptied of desire and longing. Ask that you may meet your need.” Ibn could feel Medabo’s trembling body and looked down to see tears streaming down the man’s brown face.

Medabo clenched his teeth to steady his words, then spoke. “May I speak to my younger self? Give myself another chance to make one new choice?”

“This is your need,” the Elder spoke again, “we fulfill it.” The Elder’s body changed, shimmered again as it became shorter and more slender. The shimmer faded, and Medabo looked between his upturned hands to look into the eyes of his boyhood self.

The boy looked, then screamed and struggled against an invisible power that held him in place. The boy’s feet scrambled against the rippling floor, but Medabo lunged forward, leaving Ibin’s hand, to rest his hands on the boy’s shoulder. “Dabo, it’s okay. I am your uncle. This is a special place you only see in your dreams, remember? I am an elder you will never meet again, but you must remember what I’m going to say.” Medabo shuddered and winced as a piercing shock passed quickly through his head; the memory of this moment had formed, and Medabo suddenly trembled the same way the boy had. He stammered and mumbled, trying desperately to finish what he wanted to tell young Dabo. Both boy and man, Medabo looked at himself in the timelessness of dreaming, waking, knowing and unconsciousness. Another shock, and Medabo remembered being afraid of remembering the fear he felt as a boy meeting an unknowable uncle who could barely speak. Fear filled both of them again as young Dabo’s face and body twisted in Medabo’s hands, confused with trying to contort his body away from something that would not release him. Another shock, and Medabo threw his head back, slamming his back against the floor, and screamed as his mind shattered. His hands clenched into fists, his limbs locked in twisted shapes, and both boy and man writhed in suffering. They cried as Ibin could only stand stoically overseeing the result of Medabo’s choice. Ibin had never seen someone defy a rule of the elders’ valley, but he knew that to intervene meant wanting something, so he had to remain empty if he wanted to stand watch in the elders’ valley.

Medabo twisted along the rippling floor, his eyes turned back into his head, groaning utterances that seemed to Ibin like his body begging for respite. Enraptured with pain, Medabo heard his body breaking as his bones cracked beneath his skin. Screaming with every shatter of bone, tearing of tendon, and splitting of his skin, the only other sound he could hear was Dabo's voice, screaming under the same excruciating agony. The boy broke, the man broke, and the rippling floor began to bubble around Medabo's contorted form. Ibin watched as the watery floor churned around Medabo, pouring into his mouth, eyes, and nose, gurgling down his throat to fill him. It bubbled up around the boy's body, but did not fill the boy. Instead, the boy became like the shimmering fluid, smoothed into a formless mass, then formed again into the shape of the elder. As the floor in the middle of the circle settled back into a smooth, reflective surface beneath Ibin's feet, he flashed a hard glance at the Elder.

"Your heart and mind are empty, dragon-man. Speak, serpent, ask what will fulfill your need."

"Did you let him die?"

"He is not dead because he never was. The man has emptied the universe of himself and all that he ever was, all that he ever made in this world. You, the dragon-serpent borne of the great serpent, can understand what that means. You will remember him, even in his final choice."

"When will you empty this universe of yourselves and let these humans fend for themselves?"

"The great serpent will never speak to you, we assure you. There will not be an unmaking of us as long as Voyagers come to us. Leave so you can keep your place among the Voyagers who serve the humans. Let the Voyagers continue to come."

Ibin stood silent, turned, and pressed his hand against what seemed an empty space. The door fell away again, and he returned to the bar, this time sitting on a stool and signaling one of his fellow bartenders for a drink.