Flower of Scotland

~-oO0Oo-~

Turn Again

"I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together?" Patty said.

"Yes," he replied. "We are the egg men. All together in one huge womb that is the Universe, the macrocosm. Alchemists were convinced that mercury transcended both states, both above and below, both life and death. It came to symbolize the transformation required to reach illumination and eternal life."

"Illumination?"

"Let’s not get ahead of ourselves," Mr. Tullis said, smiling. "I just wanted you to get some idea what we’re getting into."

He stared out at the windmills.

"You know, I haven’t been happy for a long time. When I began, I truly thought that this was what I wanted. But I have seen everything I love wither and die. No matter how many platitudes I use to console myself, no matter how cosmic the thought that my molecules might see the death of the sun, I am lonely. I have been lonely for so long.

"But seeing these circles being drawn in the sky gives me hope."

He turned the page.

CALX was the heading. The pictures showed a young man, bound to a burning wheel by hands and feet in a figure X. He was smiling.

"You see? More circles. Calx is latin for Lime," Mr. Tullis said. "In this case, it means, calcination, or the process of purifying by heating. If you burn a body hot enough, it goes black, then, if you burn it even hotter, the ash turns white. Similarly, if you heat limestone, you’ll produce a white powder that the Romans called Calx Vita or quicklime. This was considered a magical material, for, if you poured water on it, it gave out heat. Effectively, giving the heat back to the giver."

"And now I’m lost again," Patty said.

"This one’s easy," Mr. Tullis replied. "Look at the picture. Fire purifies. It’s also a code that says, in effect, make quicklime. It will give heat back to the giver. And, beyond that, it symbolizes the fact that the adept must purify his soul before continuing. Wheels within wheels yet again."

He tapped at the picture.

"This is from Greek mythology. Ixion was punished by Zeus. He tried to seduce Hera, and for his presumption was bound to a perpetual wheel of fire. But Ixion had seen the face of the Goddess, and although in eternal pain, was also eternally happy. Everything can be seen from two angles. Everything has at least two meanings."

He closed the book.

"I burned on a wheel… centuries ago now. You are the first in many years that has even paused to listen. And I know why. You know all about wheels and death…. don’t you Patty?"

Oh Jenny. I should never have let you play on that bike.

She started to cry, softly at first, then great heaving sobs that racked her whole body. The man merely sat and watched with eyes full of compassion.

"I could tell that you will see her again, in a better place," he said when Patty calmed. "But I am by no means sure that is true. What I do know is that nothing is ever wasted. There are wheels within wheels. My own have finished turning in this meat suit I wear. I have been a ghost inside it for too long.

"I will leave you, as I myself was left, with two words, and this book."

Turn again.

Patty looked down at the book as he put it on her hands. When she looked up again he was gone.

Far out on the water the last of the turbines started to turn.

He carried the log through to the main cottage and took care preparing a fire, using just the right mixture of paper and coal to ensure that the log would not burn too quickly when placed in the front of the grate. That done he went to the dresser and carefully retrieved a charred piece of wood from where it had been wrapped in a handkerchief. He thrust it deep into the bowels of the coal and lit the dry paper with a match.

Once he was satisfied the fire wouldn’t go out, he prepared the next part of the ritual -- three fingers of single malt in a glass by his chair, and enough tobacco to see him through the night. The log cracked and spat as he filled his first pipe. Almost immediately he was lost in reverie.

It will take time.

She has gone to a better place.

For most of the year he managed to believe, helped by mindless toil in the fields, hard liquor at night, and the crumbs of comfort that came from faith. But on this, the anniversary of the day she was taken from him, faith proved harder to come by. Everywhere he looked he saw her traces; from the mirror above the mantel they’d got as a wedding present from her father to the walnut pipe in his hand that the same old man had smoked all his adult life.

John did not notice the tears that ran down his cheeks until he was brought back to the present by the church bells calling the faithful to midnight mass.

There was a time when he would have walked the snowy lane to the church, arm in arm with Jackie, stars twinkling in her eyes. Those walks had stopped all too suddenly, the end coming as they got ready for Mass that fateful night. First came a headache, then a fit, and then she was gone. A doctor, a policeman and the vicar, three wise men, ushered her off to the great beyond.

Now John sat, with the log burning, waiting for a sign that another year was worth the effort. Carols whispered in the night across the cold air between his cottage and the church. Snow pattered on the window in an accompanying beat. Fresh tears came, and suddenly John was weeping uncontrollably. The old harmonium in the corner moaned in sympathy.

He looked up from the fire to where a quick movement in the mirror caught his eye.

Jackie?

Cold lips brushed at his cheek, tears freezing in his whiskers.

A high, soprano voice carried through the room, just audible above the moan of the instrument.

Ae fond kiss.

John sat upright in his chair, and in the process knocked the whisky glass over. It clattered on the floorboards. The harmonium stilled. Outside the snow died to a mere rustle. Over at the church the congregation was between carols. Silence fell.

Did I imagine it?

The next thought came immediately.

Does it matter?

He sat in the chair all night. In the morning he took a charred portion of the log from the cooling grate. He wrapped it in a handkerchief and put it away in the dresser. He felt refreshed. As he closed the drawer he sang the words that would see him through another year.

Ae fond kiss.

And then we sever.

Buoyed by his acceptance into the circle Dave now felt that he had to do something to make sure he stayed there long enough to find out what was going on. He delved deep into climatology databases and university server systems, and crept as close as he could to worldwide military information. From that he cobbled together a model of the coming month of where troops would be gathered, what the weather would be, and forecasted three weeks to come. He uploaded it all to a local ftp server and posted the link. Then he sat back and waited.

The reply was almost immediate.

Much to Dave’s dismay things went quiet. Nobody posted to the hash-tags for a week, and the accounts for
@saucerzrus and @weegreenmen came back as discontinued when he tried to send them a personal message. He tried to force the issue by making his own posts to the hash-tags, but he was a lone voice in the wilderness, tumbleweed blowing through his posts. No one replied.

Dave got desperate. He hacked his way into some secure military installations, searching for a secret that would unlock his contacts’ silence. He didn’t find it.

What he did find was a growing disquiet in the military with the state of the upper atmosphere. Something was going on up there, something on a planetary scale that had the top brass very worried. Dave was about to send a general tweet to see if anything was trending when he got a personal message. There was no sender identified, but he guessed who had sent it.

Times up. Switch on the news.

He did as he was told.

"An unusual phenomena is being reported all along the East Coast tonight. It is snowing in a zone stretching from New England all the way up to Labrador
–
nothing unusual for this time of the year. But what has the scientists baffled is the color. Across wide swathes of the storm-hit area the snow is falling green. As you can see from our pictures, this is no joke.
"