Arianna’s String

A seasoned traveler sets off on a latest voyage across the world, looking for adventure and novelty. Along the way, the traveler comes across a particular string. On previous voyages the traveler has crossed paths with many strings and has learned to be weary, for many of these strings lead to dead ends. In much younger days, the traveler, just an apprentice explorer brimming with youthful enthusiasm, had stumbled upon a common string, the kind that is found all over, and followed it. Several leagues beyond the heartland of the kingdom, the string had unexpectedly unraveled stranding the novice, lost, alone in a foreign realm.

Thus the traveler is immediately struck by this particular string for it is unlike any other. During his life the traveler has encountered many strings as thick as this one, composed of unique elements giving them a signature texture. But this one strikes the traveler. The word “Arianna” is etched, painted, burned, and scarred into it, in more languages than the traveler has learned in many years of vagabondage.

Every initiate in the Guild of Worldwalkers learns early on to perceive the strings that are woven into and around the world, natural phenomena that the untrained eye can not perceive without the discipline of a creative mind. Before initiates undertake the rites of passage to novicehood and are allowed to navigate along their first of string on their own, they are taught of the famous Calypso strings, dangerous and tempting filament strands that have generally led their handlers to madness, death or eternal damnation.

Indeed, all travelers follow the precepts of the errant sophist who warns all those who would follow him to be weary of strings, especially strings of power such as the strings of Calypso. “Relish in the complimentary experiences that nature feeds the soul, challenge the path and leave the string to go where no other has gone before, seek your own path to find the balance within yourself,” are guiding words that initiates follow to the letter as if it were law and leads the vast majority of guild members to avoid strings as they mature.

Despite the best of judgments forged by hard lessons and lineal knowledge, this traveler marvels, awestruck and mesmerized, at a string such as none ever reported by Guild members. The precepts, almost audible, ring in the travelers’ ears as temptation for great personal growth through unique experience is tempered by collective judgment, a detailed anthology of accounts recounted and documented by all Worldwalkers.

The patterns in this string disquietingly remind me of the Calypso strings, the only other strings ever reported to carry such distinguishing features, says the traveler, not realizing that the words have been spoken aloud. Yes, indeed, this string could be problematic, with such glyphs etched into it… Maybe a warning to the true nature of the power it contains. Yet this could also be an entirely new species altogether…

This situation imposes a difficult choice on the traveler. On the one hand, valid experience counsels to avoid such strings and on the other hand, convincing stimuli to grab impose themselves upon the traveler, urging to follow curiosity and abandon the beaten path… So my existence culminates to this moment, this place, the latest event horizon that annihilates the centre and leaves the consequences of my decision up to the mercy of the demiurge’s whims. Cruel be the Gods, curses the traveler, perplexed by the quarrel that rages within, where is Pythia when you need her!

After several moments of contemplation, overwhelmed with temptation and desire, the wisdom of Ages yields to curiosity and the traveler is compelled to pick up the string. At the first hint of contact, the traveler is struck, paralyzed but for an instant, and then, senses slowly recovering from the shock, finds them strange and alien, distorting sight and ambient sounds while stretching skin and bone.

The traveler sees not the immediate environment but glimpses fragments of an emerging puzzle covering the canvas of reality, phasing like apparitions come out from the gates of Hades or a trick of the Oneiroi. The voices of nature become muffled, distant, the final vibrations of a dying echo. Muscles tighten, resisting the pull on the travelers’ firm vessel, resisting the moment of panic, ephemeral, dissipating as the grand scheme is revealed.

I have found the Well of Quintessence! It must be the string that leads to the Alpha, the beginning of all things, and the Omega, the ultimate enlightenment. Such energies must be beyond the wherewithal of even the largest majority of the most senior Guildmasters that have taught our members. Were it not, this knowledge would surely be shared among our ranks and recorded in Pandora’s Journal. Am I to be the embodiment of the memory for the greatest discovery our Order has recorded since the Bandaloop Doctors’ lore from Taxila…?

Giddy from this exceptional feeling, the traveler does not hesitate to grab the string more firmly and to follow wherever it may lead. Whether what was shown in this vision is real or not, the road will be a step towards fulfilling the Worldwalkers’ mission, to discover the world and unite a diversity of experiences under new and more harmonious patterns.

For days, the traveler follows the string through forests and rivers, across chasms and lakes. On many a night, laying next to Arinna’s string, resting worn feet and aching legs by the wayside campfire, the traveler reads the stars and contemplates the distance traveled on the present journey. And as the stars pierce the Ether with their endless light, they reveal to the traveler that the distance is not as important as the singularity of each step, the uniqueness of each moment of every experience.

As Somnus pulls the traveler into sub-consciousness, Morpheus is quick to tease with common enticements, building on prevalent thoughts of Arianna, guised in blissful pleasures, lavish comforts, precious playthings for one’s homunculus. The traveler resists temptation, knowing that such phantasms are but shadows of what the vision has promised. Until the break of dawn, the traveler and Morpheus are engaged in a battle of wit, and so it will be on the morrow… Rest does not come easy.

Despite the accumulating fatigue, the traveler’s confidence does not waiver. What I have seen in this vision is too valuable to not make the effort to reach it. This could be the place… the place! Never before have I been privileged to gaze upon such a beautiful sight, a wonder of nature’s grandiose architecture, a heaven of serenity and pleasure, a miracle of Gaia…

On the road, the traveler salutes and passes other unwary and unconcerned journeymen and novices, some following a string of their own, as well as laymen and laywomen in rural hamlets and expanding villages, none noticing Arianna’s string looped around this travelers’ left arm. Polite words are exchanged, a few sentences of banter about the current voyage and best wishes for the road ahead.

Compared to other string-experiences, this one has kept a ward on the agents of Kronos who would have habituated the traveler’s body and mind to the string’s effects by now. The string continues emit a diffuse electrical current jumping along the traveler’s being and generates a comfortable understanding that the hand that carries Arianna’s string has been chosen, selected out of the whole of humanity, to take on a great responsibility and achieve great enlightenment, an opportunity for unprecedented personal development, guided hopefully by the Guild’s principles, harnessed as the foundation for an era of non-utilitarian humanist collective growth.

I have handled a number of strings in the past, even glimpsed a Calypso string many seasons ago. Those experiences have all enriched Pandora’s Journal and contributed to my enlightenment in their own ways. Is it not a conspiracy designed by the Fates, now, to guide me along this path, a natural and fortuitous culmination, pointing to a new phase, no an era, of renewed growth? Am I prostituting myself, delusional insecurity forcing me towards this unlikely partner which ….

The traveler’s thoughts are suddenly interrupted, shattered as he comes to stand at the top of the crest of a hillock lost among a sea of green and rolling hills, bathed in the rusting light of a waning sun, looking down into the valley. Long shadows dance eerily as the wind bites into the foliage of the nearby woods cloaking the hills. But the traveler registers none of that. Standing still, whipped by the dusking gust, the traveler holds tightly to the string, staring ahead.

In the valley below, walls of a myriad of wondrous materials form a geometrical singularity of astonishing complexity – a labyrinth! Everybody in the kingdom is well aware that they are exceptional places to commune with oneself as well as to discover the primary components of reality and the universe. At first, the traveler believes that the breath of Zeus breaks the darkness, northern lights dancing all above the labyrinth grounds…

No! These are not the lights of the frozen empire but a mesh of strings, criss-crossing and converging at the centre of this labyrinth. Truly, I am blessed witness to one of Nature’s miracles! A nexus, a hub of strings this labyrinth must be, a place of great power and revelation indeed, never before described in our Journals, in emblazoned tales of drunkenness, or in the legend lore of ancient and recent civilizations! Confidence surges in the traveler, now trotting downhill with a steady if not jovially bouncing pace…

By nightfall, the traveler has reached the gates of the maze that sprawls beyond the horizon. A moonless night. A cold night. As wondrous as they might have seemed from the first wild glimmers the traveler caught off them, the walls of the labyrinth are confining in their majesty, commanding in their strength. A pair of tall marble guardians stands vigil, pulsing with the luminescence from the array of ley lines above, daunting, eyeing incomers with their cold immutable stares, warning with wordless persistence that the way forward is fraught with peril, that this place is a sanctuary of the unknown, a shrine of mysteries and thus should be respected as such. Shrinking with the weight of humility, the combined mass of the marble twins virtually comparable to Atlas’ charge, the traveler breaches the arch, promptly regaining stature and composure.

The cold darkness envelops the traveler like a wet skin exposed to bitter wind. But the traveler’s resolve is greater than the might of the combined elements, beyond reach of those fleeting aches. Concentration does not fail – setting signs, marking the path, recording landmarks and plotting the disappearing constellations in the heavens, all the while treading lightly, avoiding traps and pitfalls. Moving deeper into the bowels of the maze at a steady pace, the traveler’s determination is as firm as the grip on Arianna’s string…

Progressively, thick clouds roll into the valley, deepening Nyx’s shroud, obliterating the solemn stars dotting the heavens as well as the weave of strings, all luminescence gone. The traveler’s internal clock says that Eos should have long ago broken cold despair with warming rays of hope. The labyrinth must be beyond even the Gods…

As the traveler rounds a bend in the path, a foot catches a loose stone awkwardly set shifting cobble work. Losing footing and balance all at once, gravity takes over the traveler’s body and the ground rushes up to greet an already abused body, repeatedly pounding skin and bones as the hammered flesh tumbles down the ditch dug out by the side of the road, hidden in the darkness. Bruised and dazed, the traveler stands, soaked from the waste in the sewer…

The string! I have lost the string, the traveler howls deep inside himself. The darkness is now oppressive and stifling, the walls too colossal to contemplate, the cold night deadly… Shock fills the traveler’s soul – confined, coffined, trapped without the string, swallowed by a wonderful warren of woes. The labyrinth is alive with the cries of creatures unknown this night, and they call to the traveler. Heart seized by fear, sweat beads along the traveler’s brow as frantic attempts are made to recapture the string from the suffocating darkness that mischievously denies it. The traveler is overwhelmed by the events that led to this moment, this place. The string is my only way out…

A combination of exhaustion, fatalistic abandonment and rational processes force the traveler to replay the latest events… A fall! To the right, an inclination in the terrain could very well lead back to the string! Hope, for the string, for the reward at the end of the string floods torn and bleeding flesh, cleansing it of inertia and imbuing it with revived motion and energy.

The climb is arduous, the ground slippery from earlier rain soaking the soil, and the brambles of thorny thickets tear at the tattered rags that remain on traveler’s back. One foot forward. Another. Plowing mud but going nowhere, the travelers’ resolve erodes as doubt drains what little strength remains… I am truly lost if I do not find the string… I could die here! I have mocked the Gods, and I am being punished for my arrogance. Here my body and soul could remain for eternity…

So why are we here?

The collective immortal dead call to the traveler from within, reawakened by his thoughts of a mortal end, recalled to consciousness by desperation. Immediate dissonance reverberates deep in the traveler’s being.

“I have come to see and be with the place at the end of Arianna’s string...”

But what did you see, the undead petition?

“I saw what I imagine to be the most comfortable place in this world… “

Could Eris be playing tricks on your mind?

“I do not surrender to the Gods, I am master of my destiny!”

Could your imagination be distorting your senses?

“Well…” Another layer of fear spreads to choke the traveler’s will.

“The sun has been particularly strong these past fortnights and the chill piercing… I did have a very light meal and have been walking for several days… The water I have been drinking has come from unkempt wells and abandoned watersheds… Maybe I am exhausted… Maybe I am starved… Maybe I am poisoned… Maybe I am sick… Maybe I am losing my mind… Maybe I should have turned back…”

“Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe I should have trusted my first instinct to avoid string – I know where they lead usually. Maybe I should have turned back earlier. Maybe I am the architect of my own demise and I will remain in this place, a victim of Arianna…”

At last, the ground levels and bloody and mud-encrusted fingernails bite hard icy cobble rock. A grandiose pain, sharp as the highest notes emitted by the young thespians in the Agora, welcome like a lost lover. The string… where is the string? The vision’s inspiration remains but it fades, but a speck on the horizon now that the eyes strain to recognize. Tearing through the disquieting cacophony of the night and the discordant machinations in the traveler’s head, a shrill and sickening moan rises not far beyond the walls ahead…

Could this be the labyrinth? The labyrinth? Oh surely not, surely the fabled labyrinth is just that, a myth born by our forebears as lessons and guidance for the harsh life that now slowly seeps from me. The creature, the dreadnaught, the jabberwocky cannot be real… this cannot be the end… Instinct propels flailing arms and legs, a mad desperate hunt for one last chance before the end to look upon the ultimate treasure.

The invisible chorus quiets as the growls and rumbles grow and engulf the traveler. The Minotaur surely approaches, is upon me, and I but have an instant to savor what is and all that has been…

A sickening calm fills the traveler as the realizations that Moira’s cruel game must so end. Indeed, Arianna’s string must be a string of power, similar but more potent than the Calypso species, more dangerous. This is the traveler’s end, to discover what could never be revealed, to experience in solitude the end and the beginning, simultaneously finding ultimate finality. It is clear to the traveler that this journey could not have ended any other way...

A finger connects with the alien materials of the string. The string! I found the string! Energy courses through the traveler’s body and soul, revitalizing senses, rejuvenating resolve and regenerating physical strength…

And then everything was quiet…

20/02/2009/PT