Cast a Light

GODS AND GODDESSES

BY 

DALE W TICE

In ages long forgotten, when mankind was still a tender creature of the earth, they followed the cooing songs of wandering birds that guided them to the fjord on the River Main. There, on green banks glistening with dew, the ancient tribe of the Franks fathered a nation intoxicated by wonder and folly. These people were descended from snow-white angels who walked the fields with blue eyes and chestnut hair flowing in the wind, gathering fruits and nuts to feed their young beneath the mild gray skies.

Some called them barbarians, yet they lived as dreamers and bohemians. Their skin shone like snow, their eyes held blue fire, and their hair burned red, gold, or deep brown like the earth they walked. In celebration, they danced around firelight beneath champagne skies, painting with mud-sticks and dream ash. When they lit the torches, the night’s breath filled their minds, and in the smoke, the monster of illusion stirred—biting holes in the fragile veil of their disguise.

They seemed as gods and goddesses, bathing their bodies in the gurgle of the River Main’s wet mouth. Their homes were of stone, hay, and wood. They sowed gardens under tranquil heavens, unaware they would give birth to children of war—offspring of the monster that would one day swallow the world in its black mouth of chaos.

For centuries, they journeyed the forgotten paths, laying their dead upright beneath the soil that now lies buried under the might of Teutonic cities. Hand in hand, they stood like lovers and warriors, numbed by the wind’s song and the coo of birds, listening to the Earth’s pulse turning in her endless orbit. Perfumed flowers drifted in the night air—planted by their mothers to color a world that would one day forget them.

Their path led to a green dale, a cradle of light beneath the white-bearded mountains veiled in mist. Here, the lost children rested, breathing with the land, falling like waterfalls, melting into the icy rain. The rain came often—soft, persistent, melancholy—and in it they found a strange peace. Within their stone havens, they pondered who they were and what they might become—a gentle beast that would one day devour both East and West.

The beast still walks. It hides in the wilderness, stalking through time, wearing black and gray and Spanish boots of leather. It marches upon the graves of its ancestors, razing peace and planting fields of bones. Over those graves, flowers bloom—fed by lies and history’s deceitful garden.

How could their children let those flowers of their mothers become streets of black tar and avenues of gray? The city towers above them, proud and blind, forging laws that fence them in and chain their feet so they march as one. Freedom is captured and slain before cheering crowds as the wilderness fills with howling malice.

Like all cities, it fattens itself on the innocence of its youth, devouring the forests to build new towers of steel and glass. “Prosperity,” cries the beast, and the children echo its call, feeding their ancestors’ gardens into the grinding mouth of the machine.

“Run, my children,” the ghosts of the elders cry. “Run to the mystic mountain, the river, the wild falls—run together, alone, indifferently.” But the children cannot hear. They numb themselves with the chaos of the present, enslaved to the blue-eyed cyclops and the two-tongued charmer who whispers through their glowing screens. They rush forward without thought, never asking where or why.

Now they lie stacked in the soil—tall, bold, beautiful, saintly—as golden maidens dance above their graves like moonlight on water. War and industry have razed their paradise, leaving the ghosts of laughter swirling through the dust.

It is here I show my face upon a brick wall hidden from the moon, whispering like a locust in the groove as the heavy winds roll down from the Netherlands. I inhale the opiate of youth and fix my gaze upon the acre of beauty painted in majolica hues, while angels laugh through the smoke that curls from our eyes.

I sense the beast again—its severed head still breathing. It rises with mankind’s descent, finding its roar once more, and when it speaks, its whisper sounds like love.

We move onward through the golden bush, where the chorus of wind sings, and the garden’s clowns are only ourselves—longing to strip down to our primal skins and dance among the maidens with flowered hair and waterlit bodies.

On my knees beneath a tree that bears the fruit of sorrow, I eat and remember. I whistle the tune of melancholy bards who once tramped these fields in black boots, stamping out the colors of yesterday. Now I dream awake, sipping the magical mud, my head in a noose and a golden goose in my hand. I dream of the white swan who leads all birds to the silver river to sing their songs into my ear.

The maidens fall, roses bloom from their cheeks, and the stragglers lose the path. The dawn becomes day, and the beast roars again for one more hour of madness. I close my eyes, pull the thorn from my side, and drag the dreams down from the sky—seeing paradise once more for the prison it has always been.