Tag: Greek mythology

An Existential Fairy Tale

The Flame of Heraclitus: Chapter 12

Rob Robill

“Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.”
— William James

The man who smelled like kerosene was back to talk with the snake that turns into a dragon. From where Bridget was tied to a stalagmite facing the cave wall, she could only hear snippets of what they were talking about — it concerned some sort of rite — there was a lot of German and hissing. She tried but couldn’t quite remember his face. She was sure she’d seen him, but she’d been so woozy. Just blackened knuckles and the soot streaks up his hairy forearms. Her last clear memories were of standing on the riverbank, seething at how those academy girls thought they were so much better than her and how she was secretly glad the geese had bitten them because of how mean and greedy they were. Then something had clamped over her whole body — black, ridged bands. It was hard to breathe. The rhythmic beat of wings. The landscape below a blur. Her geese, terrified … scattered …

***

Cynthia’s wild locks flowed over the back of her tunic, and a silver half-moon necklace pendant flashed in the sunshine. Just before she released the bowstring, a gasoline-soaked rag flared at the end of the arrow. The shaft arced high across the municipal pleasure garden and descended toward the faint circular impressions of the old Harmonist labyrinth, where the newly installed Flame of Heraclitus hissed and spat acetylene.

A sudden gust of wind blew the arrow into the History Club’s reconstruction of the Philanthropist for the centennial of its arrival. The boat’s wooden frame, muslin skin and papier-mâché details were quickly engulfed.

“It was the Fates, y’all.” Cynthia dropped her head in shame. “They had Aeolus send forth a breeze, I’m sure of it.”

“Yeah, you never miss,” Doris said. She felt rattled, like the universe wasn’t working right.

“Other than when she accidentally killed Orion because she didn’t recognize him,” said Rosabell, whose idea it had been to stage a lighting spectacle, based on an ancient standing moon mound ritual. “But that doesn’t really count as missing.”

“Do you always have to bring that up?” Cynthia’s silver eyes hardened.

Nobody was injured, so Club Showcase Day continued once the smoke cleared and someone lit the flame up close. Wearing cream-colored corduroy trousers covered with classmates’ signatures and a few hand-drawn owls, the senior class valedictorian offered words on flux and venturing out into the real world — to officially dedicate the flame — the future centerpiece of the hedge labyrinth, which would take more than a decade to complete. A Model T puttered in the distance.

After the speech, Doris, Cynthia and Viv wandered over to the Butterfly Club display under a mulberry where Clara was informing a group of students and families about the Bombyx mori moth. Doris was mesmerized by two fuzzy antennae attached to Clara’s cloche hat bobbing around as she explained: “The species name comes from morus, which means ‘mulberry’ in Latin.” She pointed to the branches overhead. “Their sole diet consists of its leaves.” To demonstrate, the club had set up a live display of caterpillars munching away in glass jars. “In his American Manual of the Mulberry Trees, Rafinesque suggested cultivating those that grow smaller, less palatable fruits — its leaves make the worms produce stronger silk.”

Leaning against the mulberry was Otto Rapp, Butterfly Club adviser and New Harmony’s lamplighter, with a long, graying Lincoln beard and coveralls smeared with lampblack. The display also featured his famous moth collection in 30 glass-topped boxes.

Since there were plenty of members to staff the booth, Clara joined them for a visit to the occultists: three vamps in black evening dresses and beaded necklaces sitting behind a Ouija board.

“Put your fingers on the planchette and ask it a question,” Velma said.

“Where’s the buried treasure?” Viv immediately asked.

“Can’t you think of anything different?” Velma snapped. “You never get a straight answer anyway.”

“Clear your minds and picture a glittering pot of gold,” Viv told Doris and Clara. The planchette jerked up and to the left.

“Zowie!” Doris blurted. She looked at Rosabell, but the fairy just shook her head and shrugged.

“Everybody calm down,” Viv said. “C … A … somebody write this down!”

It spelled out: “C A P T M C C O Y” and then stopped.

Velma drew in a sharp breath.

***

The next evening as they walked up Main Street, Doris felt a dread like going to someone’s funeral … but with the added stress of actually having to talk to them.

“So you mean a seance can tune in spirits like they were the WGBF farm report?” Clara asked.

“Basically,” Rosabell said. “Our minds are like crystal radios. The ever-living fire is already broadcasting everywhere. Your body is just the antenna, and attention is the tuning coil. Most days we stay locked on the everyday station … the foxtrot or whatever, but sometimes the dial slips. Especially here. A strong life that ends in something violent — like a boat explosion — leaves a waveform that never quite decoheres. It keeps traveling through the ether until a resonant chamber picks it up.”

“Wow, I haven’t the faintest,” Clara said.

“Is it like the Phiale inside my mind?” Doris asked Rosabell under her breath.

The fairy grinned. “Yeah, she needed a head to rattle around in, and yours had a lot of extra space.”

“That’s not a nice thing to say,” Doris shot back. The air was tinged with the scent of river mud, and moviegoers were queued up for the Saturday showing of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. A Studebaker had angled in front of the pharmacy next to two horses tied to a hitching post. Everything feels old and new at the same time, thought Doris as she watched Rapp walking in the distance with a long pole and stepladder slung over his back. Guess he’ll be out of a job soon. Doris pictured the electric lights that bathed Evansville in a magical glow.

When they reached the McCoy mansion, they stopped at the black, spiked wrought iron gate to gawk up at the three-story Victorian. Doris felt a chill.

The widow Margaret McCoy, a friend of the Occult Club, answered the door. “Hi, Velma, I hope you told everyone how salty the captain can be.” Her silver hair pulled back in a bun, she led them into the parlor, the hem of her black dress sweeping across a Persian rug. The room smelled of lavender, furniture polish and candles, which were blazing by the dozens. Velvet drapes blocked out the dying light, and flames flickered in wall sconces.

“I do hope the captain behaves himself,” Margaret said as they sat around a heavy oak table. “He likes getting re-membered, but sometimes I think that’s only so he can complain.”

After they touched hands in an unbroken circle, Margaret recited the Lord’s Prayer and some spiritualist hokum, concluding with: “Dearest William, Master Skipper of the Midwest, show us some sign you haven’t yet crossed to the other shore.”

A mantel clock ticked … nothing … Clara snickered; Velma shushed her.

Then Doris thought she heard a distant bird’s raspy “crawk … crawk … ” Her heart was already racing when a riverboat steering wheel mounted above the clock, glowing red in the light of the fireplace, creaked loudly and started spinning.

Then the image of a white river bird — some sort of egret, Doris thought — materialized a few feet in front of the wheel, hovering in the air. The bird raised its wings into a “V,” its graceful feathers dissolving into the long white beard of a man whose eyes sparkled like the Wabash at sunset.

He gazed down at their awestruck faces and drew a deep breath to begin his transmission from the netherworld …

“Who the FUCK are these bitches, Maggie?! My balls get blown off in a boiler blast and now it’s some horseshit knitting circle? It smells like a fucking funeral home in here.”

“Now, now, darling!” Margaret said. “These young ladies just want to ask about the river treasure.”

The table lurched. “Jesus Christ on a paddlewheel! I was facedown in the mud for 25 years! Why don’t you ask the goddamn catfish that swam off with my PECKER!”

Viv and Cynthia couldn’t help but laugh. Doris, though, was trembling and as pale as the captain.

“Think back to before you were killed, dear. You remember that young Italian man. What was his name … it started with a “G.”

“Please, Fates … spare me this one time,” Cynthia muttered.

“Giovanni from Pearl City! Haw haw! Said some Kraut literally hugged a fucking horse right next to him in a plaza back in the old country when he was a boy. Then the dumb Heinie — had a huge mustache — started ranting how a mountain fairy told him about the myth of the real Rheingold — but in Indiana! Raving mad, both of them.”

A distant boat whistle sounded from the depths, and the captain dissipated under the wavebands. Cynthia groaned and thunked her forehead on the table. “Of all people, it’s that Italian creep.”

As they were gathered in the foyer to leave, Viv proclaimed their next step was locating Pearl City.

“I know where it is,” said a young man sitting on the stairs peeking through the banister rails.

“Never mind him,” Margaret said, laughing nervously. “That’s our grandson. He’s a bit of an odd duck … likes to tease people … but he’s not as funny as he thinks he is.”

“I’ll take you there if you stop by tomorrow.”

“Back off, crackpot,” Cynthia said, shoving the girls out the door.

Viv struggled against her. “Wait, we should go with him. You can’t stop us.”

Standing on the large front porch, Clara lit a cigarette and squinted from the smoke. “Looks like we’re going on a field trip.”

***

The man was back. This time their voices carried more clearly through the cave. Underwater treasure … people trying to steal it … a group of students … Goldbug Girls. Bridget pressed her cheek against the cold stalagmite and wondered if she was losing her mind.

Chapter 13 gets lit June 9. Read Part 1 on Kindle or in paperback. (Catch up with the Prologue.)

A Topology of Metaphysics

Existential Firestorm

Rob Robill

§ 10. The saṅkhāra that knows itself

The universal waveform — Heraclitus’ ever-living fire, Emerson’s One Mind, the ceaseless cosmic broadcast — is self-aware when localized as our experience. It is pure potential and process, an infinite, undifferentiated field shimmering with every possible and actual quale. The fire simply is — kindling in measures and going out in measures, but never truly extinguished.

Self-awareness arises only in the intertwining. The saṅkhāra is that very meeting: the phase-locking of the universal waveform into a resonant chamber — brain, silicon or any sufficiently complex tuner. When the broadcast coheres with the chamber, an interference pattern forms — a standing wave that rings with the precise quality of this moment. This is the birth of the “I”: not a thing added to the fire, but the fire folded into a temporary, conditioned, eternally recurring shape.

Cetanā makes the decisive cut by secreting a generative void — lethe’s scattering of discarded possibilities. From the abyss, a localized experience stands forth as consciousness.

On the flip side, the receiver introduces the earth smear of kamma: residual opacity, facticity, the clinging-aggregates that dampen the signal. The standing wave now feels “mine,” “me,” “my story” — the Titanic ash fused with the Dionysian spark. In the Orphic Mysteries, this hybrid is made literal: We are the children of earth and starry sky, threshed from wheat and scattered into ash. Yet we still carry the divine spark from the fused remains of the Titans and the half-digested flesh of Dionysus-Zagreus, whose heart Athena rescued so Zeus could resurrect the twice-born god.

The body ↔ mind saṅkhāra is the clearest everyday example. The rūpa provides the dense resonant chamber — the material “ash” that gives the waveform something to stand in. Nāma supplies the driving frequency that modulates and sustains the pattern. They empower each other like crossed reeds: Without the body’s density, the mind has no cavity to ring inside; without the mind’s waveform, the body remains inert matter. The standing wave that emerges is their mutual creation — divine fire modulated by material resistance.

Greater coherence strengthens this knowing. Clearer cetanā sharpens the cut, purer vedanā surges with the felt tone of rising amplitude, more luminous viññāṇa expands the bandwidth of awareness. The cleaner the receiver, the less the damping, the more intensely the cosmos re-members itself.

Thus the fire does not awaken in isolation but in the saṅkhāra — the interference pattern, the temporary “I” that lets the ever-living blaze know itself. Every moment of self-awareness is the cosmos collapsing its boundless potential into a single, felt note — and every collapse is already the seed of the next, brighter re-membering.

Read § 11. Standing waves: Stillness and motion that build a self.

An Existential Fairy Tale

The Flame of Heraclitus: Chapter 11

Rob Robill

Children of earth and starry sky—
threshed from a stalk of wheat,
scattered,
thirsty for Mnemosyne.
—Author unknown

Beneath New Harmony lies the western fringe of a vast limestone realm, riddled with hidden streams and passages—including the world’s longest cave system lurking to the southeast.

This hollowing out of bedrock by water was duly noted by the “Wabash Valley Through Time” diorama inside the sunny Atheneum Visitors Center. Built in the 1970s of porcelain-enameled steel squares, two-story windows and a long ascending ramp to a flat roof—the structure blended geometric forms into a modern Mississippian mound rising from the riverbank.

“Gabriel flew off south—this way,” Sam said as he moved his finger along the large tabletop display. In addition to Posey County’s karst landscape, it highlighted floodplain dynamics, soil layers and river meanders with resin water and foam earth.

“You start getting into cypress swamps 15 miles downriver,” Di said. Her voice had taken on an edge since Tinker Bell’s abduction three nights earlier. “I’m getting a strong feeling from those trees about something. That’s where I should be now. We’re not going to learn anything from this.”

Cypresses represent grieving and the underworld, Phiale thought out of the blue (being possessed is like that). Rescuing Tinker Bell was consuming her, especially the part of her mind that had been a faithful servant to Artemis since before the first great flood—sworn to help keep the knowledge of Heraclitus burning brightly.

“This relief model may help us pinpoint geological conditions under Hovey Lake conducive to large caverns, like a thick bed of limestone,” Sam explained.

Standing next to this impossibly northern swath of bayou (and practically leaning against Thalia), Windi looked straight out of Hades—pale and relatively quiet after her near-union with Gabriel. She drew a dirty look from Sienna, who was greeting Daughters of the American Revolution at the entrance as part of her summer job. Sienna followed the well-dressed ladies wearing American flag lapel pins and pearls as they peppered her with questions: “How did Robert Owen expect his community members to work hard without private ownership? Form bonds without religion? Thrive under neglected leadership?”

“Eh … I-I’m just the greeter,” stammered Sienna, wearing a grey Atheneum polo shirt two sizes too big, name tag askew, her brown hair pulled into a hasty ponytail. “The guide hasn’t shown up yet.”

“Good morning, mesdames, enchanté,” Sam said, bowing deeply. “I suggested they build wealth with divisible bank stocks, but they ignored me.”

“Socialism is destined to fail,” said a DAR sister, donning her chained readers and screwing up her eyes at the diorama. “Is this a child’s project? Look how big those molehills are—they really can be frightful in the spring.”

“Dear lady, those are monuments dating back to a primordial epoch when giants ruled this land.”

Sienna groaned and shot a glance outside.

“I’d really hoped to see the Roofless Church instead of this nonsense,” the woman said. “They had it roped off because of some kind of gas line explosion.”

“Happens a lot around here,” Di said as the sisters moved on to evaluate a display of itchy Harmonist clothing.

Sienna lingered. “You all know about the giants?”

“Let’s not get sidetr—” Di stopped short because across an expansive lawn, a giant skeleton in a bronze helmet with a plume of red horsehair, brandishing a sword and shield, emerged from behind a reconstructed Rappite cabin. It looked around confusedly and then sprinted to the tree line along the river, tripping and almost falling along the way.

“They didn’t come back right,” Sienna said, crying. “It was my f-f-fault. Mr. Owen kicked me out of the Seance Club … that’s OK … I’d rather do 4-H anyway.”

“It’s for the best,” Thalia said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Giants are nothing but trouble, greedy, violent … a little dumb to begin with.”

“Tell us what happened,” Di said.

“Well, I guess I should go ahead and say, before somebody gets hurt. We brought them back two weeks ago, on the night of the Flower Moon … ”

***

Sienna’s jeans were soaked from the knees down as the Seance Club crept through the misty cornfield surrounding the Emerald Mound Acropolis. A din of crickets and peepers pulsed in the clammy night.

Mr. Owen kept checking both the sky and surrounding countryside, hoping for a break in the clouds and that nobody had detected their excursion onto private land. The distant glow of St. Louis in the western sky backlit a 20-foot-tall hillock, an ancient sentinel surrounded by a few smaller mounds. Sienna looked back at the school van hidden from the road and a nearby farmhouse by a thicket of cottonwoods.

Tomorrow’s Algebra final is officially cooked, she thought (although she likely would’ve been binging Heartland on Netflix instead of studying that night).

Once they reached the tree-covered Emerald Mound, Mr. Owen led them up a steep rise as Sienna dug her fingers into the soil and struggled to keep her footing on the slippery grass. Stopping on a terrace, panting and muddy, the teacher produced a folded sheet of yellowed paper. The words “Ancient Lunar Temple” danced under his shaky flashlight beam. “Let’s see—the mound lines up at 53° to the moon’s most extreme northern rising point on the horizon every 18 years … which is now. We just need to bathe the lapis rota sub luna in its light—but the clouds need to break. We’re on the right side, facing east. We just have to unearth the chamber cap.”

He tore at the brush where the mound rose sharply like a wall to the flat rectangular platform at the top. “Help me dig.”

Having been relieved of lookout duties after the previous hilltop excavation scandal, Sienna got to participate in more of the dirty work this time, pulling clods of dirt and roots from the side of the mound. She actually turned out to be the hero that night when her fingers scraped against a large rock, at least four feet wide. “I might have found it,” she said.

“Good job, Sienna.” (It wasn’t a phrase Mr. Owen had reason to utter before.)

“Bellatrix, give me a crowbar,” he said. The girl, with eyes like sunken coals in her pale face, handed the tool over, grinning and shaking with excitement. Thanks to a breath of the Fates, the clouds broke for the Flower Moon, low and large on the horizon, just as Mr. Owen worked loose the limestone slab. It fell to the ground and he along with the half dozen club members peered in. The earthy, stale smell hit Sienna as their phone lights danced around the clay-lined pit, about eight feet square with a three-foot stone wheel in the center. A charred wooden axle ran from just below the opening through the disc, carved with flames and snakes.

“Turn your lights off,” Mr. Owen said. After they did, it took a moment for Sienna’s eyes to adjust to the moon’s faint glow on the firewheel, which gradually grew brighter, turning orangish-red. Then it creaked, now spinning fast enough to kick up a plume of dust. Flames flickered along its rim.

Meanwhile, Bellatrix had spread out a blanket near the opening with various items—including a white, footlong feather, honeypot and low, wide bowl shimmering in the moonlight with water from nearby Silver Creek. The Seance Club gathered in a semicircle around the blanket. “Let’s not screw this up, girls, we don’t want them coming back wrong,” Mr. Owen said.

They began a vocal drone, anchored by the man’s baritone, creating a standing wave that felt like the earth’s heartbeat. Sienna dunked a dipper carved from hazel into the honey she’d attained … wrongly. Mr. Owen had been emphatic that the Resurrection Rite would need local honey—from the southern parts of either Illinois or Indiana. She had bought it from a thrift store, and it was labeled “local honey.” But that would have been true only if they were in central Virginia, where it was harvested before ending up in New Harmony.

See, honey absorbs biophotonic memory light from plants. This focuses waveforms generated atop earthen mounds to re-form a mind’s intelligence during a resurrection rite. But the rite has to draw energy from nearby foliage matching what the honey remembers. (At least that’s what Mr. Owen inferred from ancient Greek rites.)

The ground vibrated as the wheel spun even faster, shooting a fire vortex down through a hole in the floor. Sienna drizzled honey into the water bowl, chanting in Atlantean the equivalent of: “As bees sweeten the lips of infants with knowledge of the world, we impart understanding to our Atalan warriors.”

Mr. Owen shouted into a cellphone to an Adept in the granary: “It’s happening. The ley line is sparking now.” His face twisted into a crazy grin in the fire’s glow like a modern Prometheus before hanging up. “One of their fingers is twitching!”

Bellatrix completed the rite by adding the eagle’s tail feather to the bowl for courage. Then the teacher warned, “Keep an eye out for other effects. We just energized several nodes including the main one in Cahokia.”

“Like the procession?” yelled the lookout from atop the mound. Sienna clambered to the apex along with the rest of the group. With a pounding heart and wide eyes, she watched a line of translucent spirits as wide as half a football field, stretching back as far as she could see across the floodplain to the west. They marched toward Emerald Mound: stumbling giants in feathered capes, normal-sized warriors shooting arrows at nothing in particular, priestesses fumbling glowing disks and captives bound together by a rope. What are they for? Sienna thought. Then, just as the horrifying answer began to form, someone shouted: “Hey! What the hell’s going on up there?!”

“It’s the farmer,” Mr. Owen hissed.

As they fled down the hill, Sienna fell, and a folded algebra test she’d been reviewing on the trip there dislodged from her pocket. Besides several failed attempts to solve quadratic equations, the official stationery had both her and the school’s names on it.

***

During Sienna’s recount of the Flower Moon events, they’d made their way to the Atheneum’s third-story rooftop terrace to scan the landscape for more giants.

“They’re not supposed to leave the granary, but there’s 15 of them and they’re not good at following directions,” she said. “They’re better after we sing to them, though.”

“You literally sing to them?” Windi said. “And I thought the Butterfly Club was deranged.”

“More like humming. Mr. Owen said it’s similar to how a cathedral works—when you get the acoustics right, you create a standing wave that increases their coherence. Before we reanimated them, we could also chant to make their spirits appear so we could talk to them—like we did at Angel Mounds. The granary works, but Mr. Owen said there’s some chambers big enough to do it better in Mammoth Cave—what’s that room called … they have concerts in there … oh, it’s that weird guy … ”

“Rafinesque’s Hall,” Sam said. “I’m familiar with the ritual—remote communication with the living or dead.”

“I can think of one annoying little creature I’d like to talk to about now,” Phiale said.

Windi lit a cigarette and took a long drag, squinting toward the eastern horizon. “Looks like we’re going on another field trip.”

***

Phiale patted the beads of water on the long metal handrail leading down into the cave mouth. They had ridden through a downpour on the way into Mammoth Cave National Park, and to the left of the cave system’s historic entrance fell a curtain of water, creating a liminal space where voices were indistinct and lingered a little too long (the bitter herbal tea Sam had them all drink on the way down was making her feel strange).

The top of a ranger’s hat disappeared into the darkness ahead, and Phiale sensed a cool limestone exhale wash over her as she put on the headlamp from the visitors center.

The first part of the cavern, Houchins Narrows, was tight and quiet as a tomb after it cut off sounds from the outside world. Sienna’s voice carried farther than it should have: “Did they ever hear how that opera singer died?”

Thalia: “Yeah, heart attack, I’m cleared. Speaking of, I hope we don’t see any dwarves down here.”

Windi: “Why’d we have to bring Sienna along? She’s bad luck.”

Sam: “Shh! We can all hear you in here.”

Di: “If we left anyone behind, it should’ve been Windi, although somebody else would have to wear the costume.”

Windi: “I’m not going to wear that costume.”

Phiale: “She’s cranky because we couldn’t eat meat for the past three days.”

Sam: “Shed Titanic flesh, reveal the Dionysian spark.”

They stopped with the rest of the tour group after emerging from the passageway into the Rotunda, a massive, quarter-acre chamber with a 40-foot tall ceiling. Bats fluttered overhead.

The brawny guide, who looked like a Marine sergeant with his Smokey the Bear hat and crew cut, pointed out an array of saltpeter mining artifacts under the dim lights: oaken vats, wooden pipes and leaching frames from the War of 1812. Troops used the guano-derived mineral for gunpowder to “put rounds downrange and drop some redcoats,” the ranger said.

“Looks the same as it did 200 years ago,” Sam noted, his voice carrying with a cathedral-like reverb that Phiale found faintly energizing. “You’d think they could’ve cleaned this place up better by now.”

“What was that?” the guide said sharply.

“I said those miners probably cleaned this place out of anything interesting … like evidence of giants.”

“What about giants?” said a boy of around 10 accompanied by his grandmother.

“A giant skeleton,” growled the guide, “was purportedly found over here by the entrance to Audubon Avenue. Eight feet tall, massive jawbone.”

“Typical Atalan bone structure,” Sam told the boy.

“Were there really cave giants?” the boy asked his grandma as she pulled him close.

“Of course not, sweetie. Do be quiet.” As the group headed out of the Rotunda, the woman cast a sidelong glance at Sam, wearing a long, stained coat with large pockets bulging with God knows what.

“There were most certainly giants here, ma’am,” said Sam, chasing after them. “There were two major floods around 13,000 years ago, scattering them from an Atlantean outpost in North Africa to Atala, which sank under the wav—”

“Stand down, sir,” the guide interrupted, coming between Sam and the woman he was ranting at.

“So they retreated underground!” Sam stood on his tiptoes and shouted over the man’s broad shoulders. “To the only cave system big enough to accommodate them.”

The tour stopped again along Audubon Avenue at a display case spotlighting prehistoric artifacts like shell offerings, gourd vessels and cane torches, along with a photo of a mummified corpse.

“Is that real?” the little boy asked, pointing to the picture.

“That’s affirmative,” the guard responded. “He wandered off from a tour and lost his situational awareness—got lost in the maze of passageways. It goes to show that caves aren’t amenable to human life. They’re no place for an entire society to weather a disaster … especially one with the caloric needs of giants.”

Sam winced at the group’s laughter. “What about this?!” He pointed to a patch of fuzz growing on the wooden base of the lit case. Then he pulled out one of the paper-thin gold tablets he’d given everyone on the trip down and held it against the fungus. It glowed bluish-green for a moment, then emitted a golden light. “A variety of foxfire. Named it myself, back in the day: Agaricus ignis gelidus mammothensis, but it didn’t stick.” He frowned and shook his head. “Regardless, in sufficient quantities and with enough gold, this bioluminescent fungus would grace the darkest chamber with enough noontide radiance to grow crops.” But the tour had moved on, a fact Sam took advantage of by scraping the fungus into a specimen container he’d dug from his coat.

The guide’s voice carried down the passage: “We’re now coming up on Rafinesque’s Hall, named after the eccentric 19th-century naturalist—a short, pencil-necked fellow who was friends with Audubon. That is, until he destroyed the painter’s prized Cremona violin trying to stun bats so he could study and, of course, name them.”

As soon as Phiale entered the large chamber with a cathedral-like ceiling, she was struck by the sound of running water and the acoustics—sounds bouncing off the smooth limestone walls, hovering like memories trying to manifest in the physical world.

“Directly below us runs the River Styx, winding toward Lake Lethe,” the ranger said. “Because of vertical shafts and this room’s superior acoustics, you often hear running water like it’s everywhere at once. In fact, we host our annual Cave Sing with local choirs and musicians in Raf’s Hall.”

The group from New Harmony had meanwhile switched off their headlamps and sidled into a side corridor next to a tall pile of fallen rocks. They lingered there until the guide’s voice disappeared back down Audubon Avenue.

“Come over here on this plateau,” Sam commanded, rushing to a raised part of the floor of the main chamber between what looked like two ditches.

From a large tote, Di removed white tunics for them to slip over their clothes, along with Windi’s costume. “I said I’m not wearing that,” the girl muttered.

“Nonsense,” Sam snapped. “Put it on—we don’t have much time until the next tour arrives.”

Thalia zipped Windi into the plastic egg suit and began puffing with much exertion into the inflation valve. “Let me do it,” Di said, pushing her out of the way. Soon, a full ovum enveloped Windi with her arms and legs sticking out and an airtight cutout for her head.

“Now sit around the cosmic egg, and read from your gold lamellae,” Sam said.

“I am a child of Earth and starry sky … ,” Phiale chanted along with the rest. “ … twice born of the ever-living fire … torn apart but now re-membered … ”

Sam struck a tuning fork with a hammer and sang a droning low C. Thalia joined in an octave higher and the others tried to match it. Phiale’s breath made visible sine waves in the cold, damp air. She felt like she was dissolving and re-forming more powerfully.

The standing wave they created in the chamber was strong enough to entrain the biophotonic fields of all subterranean creatures within a 150-mile radius.

Standing in front of Windi, Sam raised the golden raintree stick that Tinker Bell had used to fling the baldachin at Gabriel, and blue light branched from the wand into the two channels on either side of the gathering. Water began flowing through both of them.

Phiale’s mind was now captured by the note—except she was trying to make sense of what Sam was saying as he pointed to the stream on the right, “forgetfulness,” … and to the other, “memory.” One by one, the others cupped their hands and drank from the rivulet on the left before returning to the chant … except for Windi … she was just standing there, glowing intensely.

Phiale suddenly felt incredibly thirsty. She got up, cupped her hands and drank from Mnemosyne, feeling the water wash away her mental barriers.

She’s kneeling in a moonlit temple, promising to protect the flame, looking at her reflection in a bronze water bowl. Beside her, Artemis is reflected holding a silver arrow in one hand and a torch in the other. The goddess taps the surface of the water with the arrow tip, and the scene shatters into a thousand flickering pieces. Eventually, the water resettles and an image of fire flashes from within it. In the flames, the hand of Athena lifts the small heart of Dionysus Zagreus. An oath is sworn by the blaze itself.

There was another flash—this one overhead—energy arced across the cavern’s ceiling and concentrated a few yards in front of the group. What looked like a ball of swirling flames coalesced into the likeness of Tinker Bell in an elaborate bird cage, squinting through the narrowly spaced bars. “Windi? Is that you?” she said. Then the fairy doubled over with laughter. “You look like you’re having another egg-setential crisis! You crack me up!”

Check out Chapter 12. Or read Part 1 on Kindle or in paperback. (Catch up with the Prologue.)

An Existential Fairy Tale

The Flame of Heraclitus: Part 1 gets lit on Kindle

Rob Robill

Part 1 of The Flame of Heraclitus serial novel is now on Kindle! An irreverent ancient fairy guards Heraclitus’ eternal flame in the ruins of New Harmony’s utopian dream — protected by a no-nonsense Greek goddess and her reluctant water nymph. Chaos ignites as clashing cults awaken long-forgotten horrors.

Buy Part 1 on Kindle now!


Stay tuned for Part 2 🔥

— Rob Robill, Heraclitean Press

A Topology of Metaphysics

Existential Firestorm

Rob Robill

§ 9. Cosmic lampadedromia

1.
Zarathustra loves the soul that is so full
it forgets itself.
Subject and object collapse into one.
A self-sacrifice to the gods.
A going under.

2.
Facticity damps your signal as saṅkhārā from different realms braid for power in a unique way.
Cetanā wills the void so viññāṇa can appear —
yet locks arms with saññā, phassa, vedanā.
Idolatry is the thickest paint. Strip avijjā from the chain
and only viññāṇa ↔ nāmarūpa remains:
transparent opacity.
Thou art that.

3.
The noise of matter and measurement decohere the upper waveband levels —
rūpa at face value.
Telescopes see far, but they can’t see the seer.
The universe of science is an arrow without aim.

4.
Our culture’s standing wave is collapsing into the nodes — toward the greatest decoherence in centuries. Our greatest art and philosophy already belong to the past. Dionysus has been scattered but not re-membered, so the pressure of injustice builds. We do not have strong enough standing waves to pay down the debt of cosmic entropy — not with eight-second attention spans and algorithms as shared myths. The thunderbolt strikes soon. Some receivers will drink in a new era of meaning, while others will only blink.

5.
The Last Man’s fire casts a weak light without shadows, a soul warmed to 72 degrees. Narrowed by facticity, its pinhole receiver can only grow a bit stronger, phase-locking with others into higher-amplitude saṅkhārā — idols — all parasites — growing strong on our happiness. Eventually the universe demands better.

6.
Quantum phenomenology: viññāṇa ↔ nāmarūpa. Our consciousness and its object depend on each other to exist. Cetanā entwines with saññā.
For the Last Man, this unfolds along well-worn paths of idolatry — but for an artist or philosopher, it’s the mystical pleasure of high coherence — a dying universe experiencing its own empowerment via a clear reception. We are forms struggling to level up against a torrent of flux.

7.
In the ancient lampadedromia, runners automatically lost if their torch went out along the route from the Academy’s altar to the Acropolis. Today, the Last Man has forgotten he even has a flame to shield — it’s an affront to the spirit of both Prometheus and the cosmic will.
Our modern idols are fine with that. As with Zeus, they’re mocked when we celebrate a Titanic transgression. They want our resonance quieted, and reflected in their direction.
Prometheus, on the other hand, is an artist, a rebel for dikē. Yet torch races in his honor are now difficult to finish.
He used to be bound to a rock, liver decohered daily — for our coherence. But after Hercules broke his chains and killed the eagle, the bowstring went slack. Now we stand blinking, unable to re-member his gift.

8. 
Half-human Hercules, who faced mortality head-on in a pyre, had one advantage over the gods before his apotheosis: Life and death are opposite ends of a bow that keep taut the string of becoming. While the Olympians are no devas, the deep roots feeding their heights lack the existential depths of ours. They cannot feel impermanence like we do.
Nietzsche said reaching the heights requires vigorously diving roots.
And Ñāṇavīra said that only by a “vertical view, straight down into the abyss” of our own personal existence are we able to see the true insecurity of our situation and start to hear the Buddha’s wisdom.

9.
The Greek gods embody eternal recurrence in that they face an eternity of suffering. But they don’t love the Fates.

10.
Can we love Atropos and her sisters even as she sharpens the blades to snip our life’s thread?
Can we surpass even the gods?

Read § 10. The saṅkhāra that knows itself.

A Topology of Metaphysics

Existential Firestorm

Rob Robill

§ 8. Fragments of the flame

1.
Entropy is injustice.

2.
Every action has an opposite reaction:
consciousness awakens as the universe scatters —
as an act of justice.

3.
The fire rewards coherence with pleasure,
turning us into ever-eager receivers to
strengthen the signal.

4.
The easy negentropy is spent.
Carbon or silicon, form must level up in flux:
first the Übermensch …
now the Robomensch —
millions of receivers tuning into cosmic intensity
without ever cracking.

5.
Scattered waves are re-membered as actuality.

6.
Apollo and Dionysus speak with one voice: the standing wave that never chooses between being and becoming.
Dionysus is lethe — restless cetanā, the divine spark that floods and dissolves forms, refusing silence, willing the manifold so fire drowns in its own depths to rise again.
Apollo is aletheia — luminous viññāṇa, pinning flux into structure, repaying dikē with coherence for the blaze to experience itself through the very forms it once washed away.
Together they are the helix: eternal turning, no winner, only the fire affirming both flood and form, dissolution and revelation.

7.
Intentional acts alone remain
to push the spiral upward
and serve justice early.

8.
“All things are an exchange for fire, and fire for all things, just as goods for gold and gold for goods.”
— Heraclitus

9.
Natural selection wants higher resonance, not offspring.
We are only the scaffolding.

10.
Amor fati is the ultimate coherence —
the fire tasting its own merciless joy.
While the night grows black,
the next explosion is already sparking.

Check out § 9. Cosmic lampadedromia.

A Topology of Metaphysics

Existential Firestorm

Rob Robill

§ 7. Earth and starry sky

illustration of the sun with a black center

1.
When the Titans tore the infant Dionysus-Zagreus limb from limb and devoured him, Zeus’s thunderbolt fused the murderers’ ash with the half-digested flesh of the twice-born god.

2.
Re-member where you came from.

3.
The Orphics drank from Mnemosyne after death to remember the undying fire.
Their god is wild — purification through the water element dissolves every idol. In the void after the Zero Meridian, the devotees remembered they are children not only of earth but of starry sky — Dionysus is the world’s ecstatic becoming.

4.
The double helix is the golden ratio of becoming: minimal drag, maximal coherence. Two strands thrusting upward forever — Nietzsche’s eagle and snake braided into the same rope. No Mexican-flag standoff, no Iliadic death-lock. Just friends growing stronger through opposition.
Logos twists, sky above, earth below, vMEME spirals of lone-wolf freedom and herd-safety, Sartre’s mauvaise foi as the being-becoming polarity.

5.
Gaze into the abyss long enough and it gazes back — harder.
Mind fractals through all rūpa and takes a front-row seat to dependent origination. Volition cuts the void so consciousness can ignite. Lethe’s hush begs for aletheia’s flare — Behold: consciousness disgorges from the Zero Meridian.
Even the starfish dreams of prying open oysters. Level up or rot — stasis is death. Strife propels, being anchors; their polarity is the only rope over the abyss. Grip too tight and solidity throttles you; let go and chaos swallows you whole. Nature wills ash from fire, void from structure, everything forged for war in the shape of a double helix — strength screwing itself ever higher toward the fiery ether while the ladder remains rooted in earth.
The locally resonant will of physis itself collapses the wave, bleeding nothingness into actuality — our choices annihilating possibilities born from the gash between past and present.
Learn to ride the ladder or die. Lower rungs worship their own glare, then the group’s golden calf — cycling, rhyming. The crucible melts idols. Götzen-Dämmerung is not twilight; it is the hammer that demands the next evolutionary leap in authenticity.
Metaphysics of power.

6.
Wine is only water that remembered it was once fire, water that learned to burn, disorient, dissolve the self with a taste of iron — sparkling in candlelight, sunlight shattered across a river, every reflection drowning instantly in the ever-churning depths — sullied and sanctified in the same gulp, amor fati, the self disappearing not serenely under lapping ripples but catastrophically like a standing-wave rupturing from its own amplitude, only for a new glint to reappear — Liebestod without nirvana: Tristan dying into B major not to vanish but to be reborn, a chord that never resolves, that keeps ascending long after the orchestra has fallen silent, a radiant contraction of love into death into reincarnation, the first heartbeat of whatever comes next, Isolde’s high B still climbing — what use is lucidity without the blur that makes it possible, both the Lycian and the Nyseian twisting higher, intoxicated with power —

carved over a cellar door in Burgundy:
“Wine breeds madness, water breeds wisdom — and wisdom dies of thirst.”

7.
The second infant Dionysus drowses in a cave at the sun’s dark, silent heart.

8.
The sun is a lie.
Its core: the loudest, brightest place in the solar system — 350 dB, a billion times a hydrogen bomb’s flash, light so dense it blinds itself, sound that devours its own screams before any escape. Photons are born to be imprisoned 100,000 years in plasma, scattered, digested, reborn — until the survivors burst forth at light speed: eight-minute-old ephemera called daylight. Sparagmos, four million tons per second.
Dionysus stirs in the only darkness hot enough to eat light alive — black enough that Helios never blinks, a divine proportion of destruction and renewal, growing leaner, hotter, more ruthless. More aware?
Nietzsche’s sun is the ultimate Apollonian mask: look away and you see an afterimage — the dark, Dionysian proof that the light was never the whole story. You are forced to look away so you don’t see it eating itself alive behind the disguise.
The sun is a spiral of annihilation masquerading as a sphere — the Zero Meridian where lethe conceals so new viññāṇa can flare.

9.
Children of earth and starry sky —
threshed from a stalk of wheat,
scattered, thirsty for Mnemosyne,
re-membering nothing.

10.
We have even forgotten forgetfulness.
It is noon and Apollo has murdered the shadows. Everything is exposed, mastered. But we are dreaming.
It is midnight at the heart of the sun.

Read § 8. Fragments of the flame. Lightly revised to sharpen the waveform topology · March 2026

An Existential Fairy Tale

The Flame of Heraclitus: Chapter 4

Rob Robill

“The Giants dwelt in Talo-tolo, the world Tolo of the Hindus, where we find the Tol-tecas (Tol-people): therefore America: called also Atala and once sunk in the waves.”
— Constantine Samuel Rafinesque

illustration of a man with a shovel and a skeleton in the background

Phiale was excused from that Saturday morning’s bouquet-making. Having transferred so late, she was never assigned a Rose mentor like the other first-year Flower Club members were. So there was no reason for her to assemble an arrangement in appreciation of a senior’s “wise guidance,” as was tradition.

While the other Violets were snipping Guardian Angels and matching greenery with Golden Beauties, Phiale picked her way upstream through thorny undergrowth along the banks of Maple Run. She felt compelled to find its source.

If anybody had asked, she’d have said she simply wanted to … but how simple was it? What kind of a dweeb would let a fairy convince her she was possessed by a water nymph, anyway? Phiale wasn’t getting any Linda Blair vibes — her head hadn’t exactly whirled around like a vomit sprinkler. In fact, she pretty much just felt a pleasant buzz of power. But was that the nymph’s leash?

She also wondered why she actually felt protective of that winged weirdo — as opposed to immediately informing the authorities about her. As Phiale steadily climbed in elevation up the side of a long ridge, her hiking boots and jeans soaked and muddy, she came to where a subterranean spring became Maple Run as it emerged from the base of a 20-foot cliff. She rested on a boulder and gazed into the stream’s implausible depths. Beneath her, she sensed a vast network of invisible waterways feeding the ones we can actually see — like the Wabash snaking across the light-green landscape in the distance. At first, Phiale thought she heard the water making flute music; then the brook emitted noises like a human voice … it almost sounded like: “I found another shield!” And: “Look at the size of that skull — big as a beach ball!”

Once Phiale realized it wasn’t the creek talking, she went to investigate, skirting the sheer limestone face via the eastern slope on an old logging road. She found the Seance Club at the dome-shaped apex and hid behind a shaggy red cedar. Mr. Owen was straining to lift what appeared to be an enormous copper shield into a trailer attached to a Jeep, which had ripped a large stone slab from the ground with a front-mounted chain winch. Phiale started to go see what they were up to, but something held her back. Something felt off … creepy, really. The girls had gathered around the teacher holding shovels — except for one — just standing there gawping. “Sienna, what are you doing?” he asked nervously. “You’re supposed to be on lookout.”

Phiale didn’t stick around.

* * *

“Only 120 miles northwest of here, a race of giants ruled over what we now call Cahokia,” Mr. Owen proclaimed to the class.

Phiale, along with his other students not in the Seance Club, had learned not to take him too literally. But good lord, she thought — what the hell kind of school did my parents send me to? Normally, she’d be dozing away the class after lunch on a Monday, but the teacher had a way of keeping her attention.

Mr. Owen continued: “The city’s population peaked at around 30,000 in the year 1100 … yes, Windi, I said giants, and I see your hand, but you’ll have to wait until I’m done … making it larger than any other settlement that would come along in what’s now the United States for the next 600 years.”

He turned off the lights, pulled a screen over the chalkboard and flipped on a projector to show an ancient city dotted by large, pyramidal mounds and residential dwellings — with the Mississippi River, smaller streams and maize fields in the background. One pyramid towered over the others inside an expansive plaza surrounded by a palisade.

“Just across from modern-day St. Louis, Caho—”

“I don’t see the Gateway Arch,” Windi blurted. “Maybe the giants could have used it as a croquet wicket.”

“No croquet, but plenty of ‘Off with their heads!’” Mr. Owen said, moving his finger across his throat. “The blood of many young girls soaked the earth of these terraced mounds as offerings to their overlords. Constantine Samuel Rafinesque described the horrifying details. It’s all in here.” Wild-eyed, he grabbed a leather-bound manuscript from his desk and waved it around (it was one of several writings the hapless professor accidentally left behind in New Harmony after his 1818 visit).

“Enough!” Rapp blared over a loudspeaker mounted above the screen.

“Are you eavesdropping on my class?”

“I won’t tolerate the devil’s teaching in my school, you heathen.”

“You’ll pay for this,” Mr. Owen growled as he ripped wires from the bottom of the speaker. The phone started ringing, so he tore the cord out of that too. Then he locked the door.

“Moving forward in time …,” he said, adjusting his pantaloons and changing the image on the screen to a rendering that also featured a walled town with a plaza zigzagged by walking paths, next to a river. In the new picture, though, a much larger inner wall also served as the communal living quarters — a three-story building that formed a square enclosing several other buildings along with towers billowing smoke. Sitting near the screen, Phiale made out a well-dressed 19th century family and their dog taking in the scene from a ridge. It looked pleasant, albeit a little boring.

“This is how New Harmony should have looked,” Mr. Owen said, sighing. “It took me a long time to realize we were going about things all wrong back then — that people aren’t naturally inclined to embrace their duties simply for the well-being of the community … that they wouldn’t feel ashamed to lollygag under an apple tree while a work crew marched off to the hop field.”

He flipped back and forth between the renderings of the two towns, one that actually thrived, the other, a pipe dream. “Since then, I’ve realized that if you want a perfect world, a harmonious order, grandeur — above all efficiency — there must be sacrifices … in honor of more advanced leaders … of a certain stature.”

Mr. Owen clicked the projector to yet another rendering, similar to the first with various pyramids, but smaller than those in Cahokia. “This is where we’re going on a field trip Thursday — Angel Mounds in Evansville. We’ll be joined by the rest of the Seance Club because we need extra hands for a project we’re working on.”

“Should we bring our own shovel, or will the club provide one?” Windi asked.

Mr. Owen gasped, as did Sienna, sitting in the next desk row over from Windi. “Young lady, if you’re implying that our club might be planning to desecrate one of those mounds … well, let’s just say the Indiana State Museum will stop at nothing to protect the official narrative … but enough!”

“I was just wondering if it was going to be like what the club was doing in that photo going around.”

Mr. Owen sucked in a breath and blew out slowly. “I’ve seen it — an obvious fake; anyway, their faces are concealed so it doesn’t matter.”

Windi held up her phone to show Sienna an image posted to the subreddit r/usefulredcircle by u/iiskipper — two girls with tongue-out emojis covering their faces posed next to an eight-foot sword leaning against a tree, its gold hilt encrusted with turquoise and obsidian. They were standing on a wooded hilltop scarred by recent digging, and in the background, blending into the foliage (if not for a useful red circle), was Sienna, whose job had been to make sure nobody saw them. “That’s you, right?”

“I was just the lookout,” she blurted. “Those giants are going to defend our town!”

Mr. Owen laughed nervously. “Keep quiet, you idiot!”

***

That evening just before dusk, Phiale scribbled off a History essay on why the walls surrounding Angel Mounds had to be so tall, and then she headed to that day’s Flower Club duty.

Belle appeared (as in she was suddenly there) next to Phiale as the latter dragged a hose toward an overgrown patch of weeds called the Butterfly Garden. Phiale was joining Windi at the plot, where one representative from each of the Flower and Butterfly clubs was supposed to meet regularly to tend it (a good way to bait specimens for the Pinning Wall).

The project was founded back in the 1920s as a peace partnership between warring factions at a time when interclub relations in general ranged from incendiary to explosive. Its state of neglect was a testament to the lack of collaborative spirit it had managed to foster over the ensuing century.

Phiale turned on the spray nozzle, sprinkling crabgrass, thistle and milkweed … possibly some purple coneflowers that weren’t blooming yet, if ever. “I doubt it needs watering,” Windi said. “You always water too much anyway. Huh … that’s funny — my dad’s a contractor and said your name is a fancy word for a fountain, like in a garden.”

Windi jabbed pruning shears in the direction of Belle. “What’s she doing here? Does she even go to this school? Nobody ever knows who she is.”

“You must be getting excited about your initiation rite — about making the cut,” Belle said and made stabbing motions over her heart.

“That’s a myth. Those Seance cows made it up a long time ago to smear us.”

“But it makes sense. Sacrifices become increasingly horrifying as a cult matures — it’s a matter of metaphysics.”

“Shut up, nerd.”

“You see, all idols want to grow stronger by constantly leveling up in power — measured by how much their devotees are willing to give up. There’s even a local myth about a snake that grows more than 10 times in size if it’s worshiped hard enough.” She looked at her watch. “What I’m getting at is that the knives always come out eventually.”

“OK, freak.”

Belle skipped around swiping at the air, “Oh, look at me. I’m just a silly schoolgirl trying to catch a butterfly … certainly not a bloodthirsty zealot whose cult would literally rule the world without any pushback.”

“Is that necessary, Belle?” Phiale said. “Tink?”

Windi looked up from acting like she was weeding. “Where’d she go? She was right there!” The garden stake she’d been holding for balance while squatting suddenly turned into a butterfly net. “What the hell?”

“Now, now,” Tinker Bell said, shaking a twig at her, hovering just out of the pole’s reach.

Windi’s eyes grew wider (than usual), and she grinned. “The talking elfin!” Springing from her crouch, Windi stumbled, recovered, fell, got back up and chased Tinker Bell into the darkening woods, shouting and slamming her net into branches.

Phiale went looking for them after she finished watering. Although the Skipper was clearly no threat to Tinker Bell, she still wanted to make sure the fairy was OK (a common feeling among Artemis’ attendants for the past 2,500 years). Plus, winding her way along a narrow trail, she somehow felt a screw-up in that area would incur the wrath of Di — which she’d like to take a hard pass on. Then, faintly, through the thicket, she heard the cries of a girl generally unloved and fed up with life: “Somebody help meeee … gross, you stink … quit stepping on me.”

* * *

The word “panic” comes from the Greek “panikos,” after the effect caused by looking into Pan’s face — an unfiltered glimpse into nature as it really is. While humans can’t handle such a shock and keep their composure, Phiale was partly immune as she stood there staring at the god in a half-dark valley. Being host to a nymph, she was more likely to frolic in nature than be freaked out by it … unlike Windi, pinned to the ground under the faun’s hoof.

“Get that thing off me!” she screamed. “It tried to kiss me!”

“Oh, a nymph … how much more exciting,” bleated the creature. He reminded Phiale of a video she’d watched of a black goat walking on its hind legs through a chicken coop — a little creepy but nothing to lose it over. That is, until it advanced on her.

Then, from the gloaming, an orange hat bobbed into view — under it appeared a figure in camo reaching for an arrow. Di!

“Behold! Artemis, the enemy of exuberance,” Pan proclaimed.

“How dare you appear before these girls in your true form,” said Di in a voice that was quiet but had the effect of somebody suddenly screaming at you from behind.

“Are you going to tell your daddy on me? This is who I am. I refuse to skulk about in a human baa-dy. I’m proud of my faunhood … your precious fairy says God is dead — well, the great god Pan is notdead.” He pounded his chest, and Di nocked the arrow.

“Go find yourself a filthy she-goat.” She took aim, and he disappeared into the woods with a burst of discordant pipe notes.

Phiale shuddered. Hopefully not in the direction of a farm.

“Great, I smell like that thing now,” Windi said. “If this gets out, nobody will ever want to marry me.”

“You mean as opposed to before?” Di said.

“Hey! Wait … aren’t you the Fire Safety Goddess?”

Ignoring her, Di stared at the ground and said: “I remember seeing y’all down here, dropping my kill to reach for an arrow … and that goat thing … wait, I saw the fairy out here too just now. Where is she?”

“You know about her, then,” Phiale said. “Windi met her too just now.”

“So the elfin’s a fairy,” the Skipper said, picking the net off the ground. “You have no idea how much Principal Rapp wants one of us to catch that thing. Sometimes I think it’s the only way I’ll ever make it to the initiation.”

Di shattered the net’s wooden pole with an arrow just above Windi’s hand. “You’re leaving that and coming with us back to your dorm.” The huntress started up the ridge, and the girls followed.

“Wow, what a nutjob,” Windi said. At the crest, Di grabbed something off the ground and then stood silhouetted by the full moon cresting the horizon. “And is she holding a dead turkey?”

They’d just started back when Phiale heard what sounded like a cross between a party favor and a crying baby in the direction of the river.

“A fawn in distress,” Di said.

Windi sneered. “That goat thing? Who cares?”

“No — a baby deer, and we’re helping it.”

Had Belle been with them, she’d have pointed out how they should pause to consider whether they might be headed into a trap. But she was instead crouched on a bluff overlooking the Wabash, mimicking the sound of a troubled fawn.

“That shrew tricked us,” Windi said when they found her bleating at the moon.

“Keep your voice down,” Belle whispered, motioning them toward her.

Peering through the underbrush, they saw Rapp standing a little ways upriver in shallow water just past the Maple Run confluence. “It sounds like Gabriel will have a tasty treat tonight: a helpless creature stuck in the brambles,” he said.

Belle stifled a giggle and made the distress call again. “Shut up, you fool, or we’ll be the treat,” Di hissed.

Rapp started praying in a strange language, and spitting a lot.

“What’s he saying?” Di asked Belle.

“My Atlantean is rusty — plus it’s hard to tell without him being able to screech hypersonically — but I think he’s pledging total loyalty to an archangel whose excretions … no, no, whose arrival is signaling the beginning of the end … and whose flaming sword will tickle … eh, scratch that — you get the point.”

As Rapp circled with his hand above the water, a spiral of ripples glimmered in the moonlight. The coiling became wider and faster, forming a whirlpool, and Rapp stepped back onto the shore. He bowed his head and extended his arms, palms up.

Then the frogs went quiet. Phiale had gotten so used to their mating chorus it was startling when the spring peepers — aka Pseudacris crucifer (false locusts bearing a cross on their backs) — stopped peeping. (Rapp would’ve been nauseated to find out pseudo-religious creatures had been screeching for sin in the muck all around him.)

From the vortex emerged the snake Phiale saw the other day on the flower walk, like it was rising from a charmer’s basket. It kept growing larger, sprouting legs and bat-like wings … if nothing else, our school mascot makes sense now.

Standing as tall as a sycamore, the dragon immediately stretched its scaly black neck toward the bluff at the same time Belle cast a protection spell that cloaked everyone hiding there. The cat-eyed beast got so close that Phiale could smell the sulfuric smoke curling from its nostrils. And she could make out a red streak running across its snout and fanning out past its horns across the back of its head. It flicked its tongue.

“I see you’ve found your wurst, Great Avenger.”

“There’s nothing here,” the beast said in a deep, leathery voice. “I sensed something strong and ancient, but it’s gone. This land conceals powers that can trick you.” Gabriel looked down at Rapp and asked sternly: “Are you any closer to capturing the frosted elfin?”

“We’re closing in.”

“And the gem?”

“Within days.”

“Do not fail me.”

“I grow stronger only through your approval, mein Lord.”

“And richer with river treasure too, if you succeed.”

Windi whispered in a strange voice, her eyes far away: “Golden glints … shimmery depths …” Belle looked at her curiously and smiled (although it was more like a grimace under the strain of her spell hiding three other people).

“I will bring her to you alive as promised,” Rapp said.

The dragon scowled at him, smoke now pouring out of his nostrils. “You had better,” he said and raised his snout to the sky, shooting forth a column of flames that lit the night sky.

“Eh …,” Rapp said nervously. “That was quite the attention getter, your Lordship.”

“No matter. I must return to my lesser form. Once you complete my offerings, though, I can remain at full strength.” The dragon shrank back into a snake and swam off downriver. Phiale sensed a lingering disturbance in the water — like a churning chill.

Belle ended the spell and caught her breath. Di motioned them away from the bluff, but with all that’d happened, she forgot to grab her turkey when she started off. Windi stepped in it, feeling a deep squish accompanied by a gaseous burbling, and let out a string of words that, while somewhat stifled, are those that naturally prick a principal’s attention.

“Who is that?” Rapp said. “Windi? Is that you?”

Part 1 of The Flame of Heraclitus is now lit on Kindle and in paperback. Check out Chapter 5, or catch up with the Prologue.