SWIMMING IN THE GHOST RIVER: V

by A. A. Attanasio 

Five

Shaman Salmon

Bobbing in the Ghost River, you peer toward the far shore. Night paints the black water acrylic. The topaz gleam of the Sunstone beckons from among trees slender as Van Gogh’s cypresses.

Wisely, you turn away. You will swim back to the near shore and seek advice from the Ghost Deer. You kick, and a chill hand seizes your ankles. The river twists you backward. Your arms flail empty spirals, struggling against the surging current that pulls you under.

A song comes into your throat, your last breath bursting to get free. You swallow it. It won’t stay down. It tries to push out from behind your eyes!

And then, you are staring into a hooligan face. A salmon has swum up close. “Stop struggling!” his chiding voice teems. “The way up is down! Follow me!”

The instant you stop trying to swim, you plummet. The song of your life spins above you in crystal bubbles. 

Gritting your teeth against the next moment’s grim inhalation, you bounce off the river bottom’s soft trampoline. You somersault through a cloud of silt and land in a kelp forest that sieves the current. 

“Take hold!” A slippery flash of salmon sews a path among the leathery fronds.

You claw your way through that nightmare jungle and strain against the undertow. The salmon skims close to your ear and whispers encouragement: “As every ray of light is free, all darkness has design. Hold on. Keep crawling. You’re defeating defeat. A little farther. Okay, now. Let go!”

Your fists unclench the river weeds, and you rise. The salmon pushes from under. 

With a wet gasp, you break the surface and inhale moony air. Rolling to your back, you gape at the breathing stars.

The salmon slaps its tail and declares through a pugnacious grin, “It doesn’t take a Shaman Salmon to see you shouldn’t be swimming in the Ghost River.”

When your breath finally fits words, you say, “The far shore… I must reach it.”

“Then, you better get yourself a boat.”

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for Part VI of

Swimming in the Ghost River

by A. A. Attanasio 

SWIMMING IN THE GHOST RIVER: IV

by A. A. Attanasio 

Four

Sky Pony

Stars flutter on the surface of the Ghost River. The moon wobbles, and bright, widening zeroes riffle as you wade in. With blood warmth, the water receives you.

You will swim to the far shore. You can see the Sunstone from here, glowing softly under the nape of night. You push off with a confident breaststroke that fixes in your gaze that luminous mote upon the far shore.

Ahead, slick water reflects the silence of space and a splatter of stars. They rise and fall with the ripples of your swim. 

The way that dewdrops light up like diamonds, the starry reflections on the slick and moving water harden. They gleam with the glint of dark hooves, shimmer like glossy fur, streak a tail, a flaring mane, and spark the brave intelligence of a horse’s eye.

Within the soft gel of that stare, awareness peers from alternate worlds. “What are you doing out here, swimmer?” The vanishing horizon within the eye pulls closer with curiosity. “You are not nearly strong enough to mount me. Why are you swimming in the Ghost River?”

“To get to the other side.”

“Turn back! You will drown. There’s an undertow ahead.”

“Who are you?”

“I am Sky Pony. Strong Dreamers swim out here to mount me and ride the glittering path of the Milky Way to the Beyond. But you are not strong enough to catch me. You will drown.”

You tread water. “Sky Pony, carry me to the far shore! I’m getting the Sunstone! To free the animal souls!”

On the ruffling water, the Sky Pony gallops. “I can’t help you, dim swimmer. You haven’t the strength to catch me. Let alone hang on even to reach the near shore. Keep calm. Swim back. And get a boat.”

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Swimming in the Ghost River

by A. A. Attanasio

SWIMMING IN THE GHOST RIVER:III

by A. A. Attanasio

Three

 Dreaming Tortoise

Here is the Dreaming Tortoise. She is very old. To her, life is a slow dream, an endless blue summer evening. You know this the instant you meet her wet eyes. She is watching you from inside her mossy shell on a stone shelf of the riverbank. 

She touches you with her luminous telepathy, which shines a light down the long tunnel of your body. She sees all the thoughts that suture the feelings in the heat haze of your flesh. She sees all of you.

And you see her. You see all the seasons of humanity in her memory: our African womb-time that delivered us to Ice Age winter, then a river delta spring, the giddy summer of Enlightenment that eventually followed, and now the fall of the manufactured world. 

And there you are in the Dreaming Tortoise’s mind, tucked in the events of your life. There you are, oblique with ignorance. What do you know of the dead? You know little enough of the living.

Not to worry. Your brain may continue to sleep in its mysteries. She will waken your heart with her radiant telepathy. 

Weightless omniscience lifts you to falcon heights above the Ghost River. Down you gaze upon the milling animal-souls on the shore of wandering. You see the ponderous slow drift of their sorrow, surging like the sea and as deep.

Upon the far shore, a circular glow shudders against the dark. A night fire? No. Your heart feels something stronger yet. Something untranslatable. This is the Sunstone. It is the little house of rock where the Sun retires at night.

Cross the Ghost River. Claim the Sunstone and carry it to the exiled ghosts of the abattoir animals on the shore of wandering. Do this, and those souls taken by people without thanks shall enter heaven. The Sunstone is the gateway. 

But you must cross the Ghost River without a boat. The Sunstone will not abide made things. The door to heaven will never open to made things. 

Can this be true? Are you the one to end the long suffering of the stolen souls? The very question returns you to the long tunnel of your body. You stare out at the wet, unblinking eyes of the Dreaming Tortoise. 

And you know.

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Swimming in the Ghost River

by A. A. Attanasio

SWIMMING IN THE GHOST RIVER: II

by A. A. Attanasio

Two

Ghost River

You cross the field of human mystery, following the Ghost Deer. It’s a wide field and dark. The sky looks like a drowned kingdom, the stars watery reflections of a submerged city.

The Ghost Deer floats ahead pursuing green scents etched on the night. The moon is a diamond hammer. It disappears when you enter the forest. Chains of moonlight among the trees restrain the dark. 

Under those big trees, the Ghost Deer moves with the melody of a silent song. You hurry after. The giants of the forest stand aside, and you find yourself before a broad river. The river’s black fathoms offer no light but for the moon, which swans on the surface.

Along the riverbank, fog rolls. Not fog. Flocks of spectral birds swirl like a moonlit dust storm. Below them, herds of phantoms swarm. They flow through each other: cattle, swine, sheep, deer and buffalo. And no noise pounds from their hooves. No sound of their prodigious voices reaches you. They drink the dark wind off the river, endlessly moving.

“These are animals butchered without prayer.” The Ghost Deer’s dream voice speaks with emotional strength. “People killed them and gave no thanks to the Beast Maker. And so, they are exiled on the shore of wandering.”

“Why have you brought me here?”

The shimmering deer shimmers closer. “Do you know who I am?” Its voice in the corrugated shadows glows inside you, brightening your blood. “I am the ghost of the animals your ancestors killed with sanctity that your forebears might live. And you stand here on the ground of their blessing.”

“What do you want of me?”

The Ghost Deer’s voice hovers in silence, “You are the human animal brought here to bear witness.”

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Swimming in the Ghost River

by A. A. Attanasio

SWIMMING IN THE GHOST RIVER: I

by A. A. Attanasio

One

 

Ghost Deer

A dull thud, like an apple falling in late summer. 

Out of mists that rise from where deep roots deepen in the fallen world of dead leaves and twig litter, the Ghost Deer appears.

It is blue as the moon and filled with dreams that swirl like milt. Its eyes dazzle, webbed as starlight and with the pulse of starlight. It acknowledges you with a soft nod. 

What does it want? Why has it found you out here in the open field of your solitude? You thought you were alone here, as always before.

The coal-lump of its nose twitches, reading your scent. It nods again. You’re the right one. 

“Come,” it speaks in a voice unsprung from sound, empty. How do you hear this quietness that fills your inner dark? “Follow me.”

“Why? Where are we going?”

“To the Ghost River.”

The answer is there, is gone. The Ghost Deer’s words unroll urgency. And this urgency opens wider in you. Out of the thinnest air, awareness arrives:  You have spent your whole life asleep.

It turns. Its hindquarters glow against the dark, a cloud riding the last light of the sun. 

If you follow, the future collapses. If you follow, you know you can never come back to where you are.

You must decide. Are you the now that fills you now? Or are you the absence your next step fills?

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for Part II of

Swimming in the Ghost River

by A. A. Attanasio