John's Vision

Wendigo War - Part I, Chapter 11 Awake.

Standing in a lake; No, on a lake. On the water.

How is…? Where am I?

Brilliant flashes above, thunderous roaring all around and within, terror.

Boom-Ba-Ba-Boom-Boom-Ba-Boom.

Lightning flashes behind a vast, dark coming cloud, illuminating an avian god, a Thunder Bird, over the muskeg, with wings outstretched in powerful supplication to a great mystery existing within and beyond space and time. Successive flashes sustain the image for several heartbeats. Gripping fear. Another flash, behind.

Ba-Boom-Ba-Ba-Boom-Ba-Boom.

Over the lake, Rolling Thunder.

Lightning fills the sky, illuminating the water. Lake Mameigwess. Shifting forms, emitting a nauseating stench. Overpowering. Gagging. A Western Wind comes fast and hard, stinging the eyes and kicking up waves. Voices on the wind speak a strange warbling tongue. Not voices but waves crashing against an ancient rock shelf near the village. Not waves, voices…

A name, a warbling whisper ~

“~~~~ DEBWE ~~~~”

~ spoken by the Little People. 

Day-bway. What the hell does that mean?

Mind retreating, skin crawling, as they speak of ancient things. Mysteries.

Time is short. Life is eternal.

Sudden light. Not lightning. Daylight. Night becomes day.

A greenish-blue sky, a methane-saturated greenhouse-gas nightmare, with light from distant stars shining as blurred streaks through the haze.

The lake is red-orange poison, rust corrosion. Old Testament plagues, the river turning to blood. God’s wrath. Dead fish cover the water to the horizon. Stinking, rotting, whitefish, walleye, northern pike, brown trout, a delicacy in the village. To the east, a turtle swimming between two islands. The Community Building. Nawadjiwon…now dead. Nothing left but dilapidated houses, many collapsed under winter snow. No people. No dogs. Nothing.

Time is eternal. Life is short.

Tentative steps on the water, fish breaking apart at the slightest touch. Endless decay. The warbling voices speaking louder…down in the water, an object. A rock, black like night but softly glowing, the pollution’s source, the reason the village died.

Diving deep into the acidic mire, grasping. Skin blistering. Blinding. Voices, the Little People, guide through the darkness. Reaching out, blindly feeling for the black rock, uraninite from the mines.  

Swimming up toward daylight, poison rock in hand, the world changes. The lake is calm. The blue-green water teems with life. Fish swim in the depths, and geese glide over sparkling diamonds. Nawadjiwon lives. People work on the dock, children play by the water, and elders sit on their porches. Martin waves from the shore. A brilliant red-orange sunset dominates the western sky. Harmony and Balance are restored.

A blazing white symbol appears on the eastern horizon, where the sky meets earth, turning and unfolding into a familiar shape, an incarnation burned into the mind, etched upon the soul…the central symbol in Rachel’s painting – the mandala drawing all to the center, to the place where life and death unite, time unbounded in infinite space. The symbol changes, revealing new truths. As parts fade from view, others become brighter: an encircled equilateral cross. Changing again, illuminating a circle with four feathers emerging from the center to the cross-quarters, one to the northeast, another to the southeast, and the southwest and northwest. Now, a starburst, a brilliant eight-pointed star whose corona is the sun. At last, changing into a Maltese cross, an ancient Christian icon. Four transformations.

Staring into the black rock, realization dawns, followed by aching remorse. His mines dug the uraninite from the Deep Earth. His mines created a nightmare.