Tag: Heraclitus

An Existential Fairy Tale

The Flame of Heraclitus

Rob Robill

Chapter 9

“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.” — Gustav Mahler

“Plants are called ‘emergent’ when they break the water’s surface,” Mrs. Owen explained to her Elementary Biology class. “Local examples include yellow water buttercups, named Ranunculus flabellaris by professor Rafinesque. They bloom this time of year in Maple Run, bearing yellow flowers that display radial symmetry — Clara! Quit staring out the window and explain to the class what radial symmetry is.”

“Eh … it’s when they broadcast jazz from the graveyard?”

“You either need to clean your ears or —” Mrs. Owen slapped the girl’s desk with a blackboard pointer three times: “Pay! Better! Attention!”

“Lord, I need a coffin nail,” Clara said under her breath as the teacher walked away.

Viv leaned over from the next row and whispered, “Don’t let that Trotsky get to you.” She held up a pack of Marlboros. “For after class. Mild as May.”

Clara’s eyes, already large behind the thick lenses of her round, tortoiseshell glasses, bugged further at the sight.

Viv turned to Doris behind her. “I’ve got enough if you want one too. I’m dying to show y’all something.”

“And how!” I’m actually going to inhale this time, thought Doris, who’d transferred to the school a few months earlier and was eager to make friends.

So they puffed the last class of the day away on a lawn along the east bank of the Wabash while Viv filled them in on the craziest thing Doris had ever heard. Supposedly, the ghost of Rafinesque, via a Ouija board owned by Occult Club Dabbler Velma, informed Viv of a treasure map concealed behind his portrait in the school’s main hallway.

“Why are you hanging around Velma — that vamp’s got freaky raccoon eyes,” Clara said, giving Viv a death stare.

“What difference does it make,” Viv said, pulling an old sheet of rag paper from her beaded purse. “What matters is the map was there. We’re going to get rich — and it’s going to keep that racist bank from taking pa’s repair shop.”

“I heard the town wants to turn it back into an opera house,” Clara said.

“Opera is dead.”

As if to prove her wrong, a voice from beyond a bend in the river floated toward the girls: a tenor singing the “Recondita armonia” (hidden harmony) aria from Puccini’s Tosca. A tall man in his 40s with thick eyebrows, a thin mustache and slicked-back hair came into view propelling a jon boat with a long pole. Dripping freshwater mussel cages were scattered across the deck. “Ciao, my name is Giovanni,” he said to the girls, tipping his boater hat as he drifted past. “It is nice to meet you, belle ragazze.”

“Don’t care … at all,” Viv muttered.

Doris smiled and waved, picturing herself reclining in the punt, gliding downstream as an Italian man serenaded her.

“Do you have a singing part in the play, Viv?” Clara asked.

“No, all the roles are speaking except a chorus that ‘provides narrative context’ — is how Rosabel put it. My Lord, she’s aggravating.” Viv, who sang in a church choir, preferred musicals but had been talked into her current role as Ethiopian princess Worknesh Zewditi because of her own African ancestry. “You know she’s convinced the senior class to install the eternal flame from the play in the middle of the labyrinth as their class project — just honor that Greek guy nobody’s heard of before.”

“We’re arranging plants around it in the Flower Club,” Doris said. “Reds and yellows like marigolds and poppies — and hummingbird vines to grow up the columns … Rosabel said they taste good, anyway.”

“Taste good? … wait, you’re in the Flower Club?” Clara asked. “I thought you were in the play.”

“Yeah, both. Cynthia said I’d make a perfect temple nymph, so I’m moonlighting.”

“That lady’s off her cob,” Clara said. “Anyway, they shouldn’t let somebody from outside the school run the Theater Club. She’s a bit rough — and couldn’t pull any of it off anyway without Rosabel’s help.”

“Shut your Skipper mouth,” Viv snapped and took a long drag off her Marlboro, sending a plume of smoke toward the heavens. “Cynthia’s divine.”

* * *

Doris tipped a jug of water over the hands of an Ephesian lawmaker standing at a basin. The worshiper then dried her hands on her tunic and scowled at another girl representing an old man with a long gray beard rolling bones across the stage floor, surrounded by urchins.

“Look at that fool! I’m busy making laws all day while Heraclitus wastes his time playing games in the hallowed temple of Artemis.”

“Snake eyes!” shouted the philosopher.

“’Tis an affront to the almighty goddess,” princess Zewditi said snootily as she waited in line for cleansing, reeking of cigarettes and holding a goat’s leash.

“Maa,” exclaimed the animal, seemingly in agreement.

“Sweet Zeus!” Rosabel shouted from offstage. “You’ve got a she-goat in the cleansing line and you’re the one shaming someone for sacrilege? The sacrifice line is over there!”

Rosabel buried her pixie-like face in her palm and shook her head. “We’re only two days from the premiere — we can’t still be making mistakes like that.” (She wasn’t even officially in the Theater Club, and no one had ever seen her in class for that matter.)

“Also, princess, you’re supposed to deliver that line with ambiguity — a little breathless … like he’s being a naughty boy,” the fairy continued. “You’re his metaphorical ‘flame,’ after all.”

The philosopher winked at Viv, and her face contorted in disgust.

“How about we come back to this scene later?” Rosabel suggested. “Let’s go straight to the end.” Sitting in the shadows by the chorus, Cynthia shrugged.

“Great! Slaves, roll in the flame!” Using ropes tied to a wheeled pallet, a group of girls dressed in rags pulled The Flame of Heraclitus onstage with an acetylene tank in tow. “No … over there, underneath the fairy. Perfect. Just make sure you don’t turn the … ”

A match flared. A slave grinned. A gas valve had been left too wide open. The actress playing the fairy, dangling over the stage by a rope, was mostly out of the ensuing blast zone, though, except for the long swallowtails of her gauzy dress.

“ … fire up too high.”

Doris grabbed her jug and tossed a plume of water toward the flames as they climbed the fabric … not quite hard enough, or in the right direction — but the stream changed course and found enough extra momentum to drench its target. Did I do that? she thought.

A slave managed to cut the flame down to only two feet. “I’m OK — you don’t have to let me down,” the girl on the rope said. “Let’s get through this.”

Rosabel told the dangling fairy that she admired her spirit, addressing her with the character’s actual Atlanten name, with all of its related drama. “You make me proud of myself.”

“Rose! Quit spitting everywhere, and let’s get going,” said Cynthia, her eyes narrowed and glinting silver.

“Yes, a rose! But this one makes no loogie!” exclaimed the Italian boatman from earlier, holding up a single red blossom. “Ciao, Signorina!”

“Oh, no,” Cynthia muttered. “That freak gives me the heebie-jeebies.” Then addressing the sudden visitor, she said sternly: “Like I told you before — buzz off!”

He looked crushed. “One day, you are chasing after me — after my river gold, sinceramente.” He held up a hand, bringing his fingers together pointed upward, and shook it — then he tossed the flower to the floor and stormed out.

“What’s that about ‘river gold,’ Cynthia,” Viv asked nervously. “Cynthia?”

“No idea.” The woman rose from her stool, standing just over six feet tall, and clapped her hands. “To your places — Herostratus! Flame Keeper!”

With the lingering odor of melted tulle and clams in the air, the crew lowered a painted backdrop depicting a large temple chamber. The Flame Keeper took her place in a parlor chair with red cushions next to the fire and a stack of scrolls on a pedestal. Then she touched her head and looked up. “She’s dripping on me … and my seat’s wet.”

“Stick to your lines,” Rosabel commanded.

“Sorry!” said the Flame Keeper — then to Herostratus: “Why are you carrying a torch. Is The Flame of Heraclitus not bright enough to illuminate the temple?”

Sporting a large, fake cheek scar, Herostratus limped back and forth holding a small bundle of sticks with orange tissue paper glued to the top. “I will need no one else’s light soon enough — my own will burn brightly for generations.”

“I know not of what you speak. You’re a nobody. Heraclitus’ flame still burns brightly because he described the true nature of things, which is fire.”

“But how quickly could the light from the Book of Heraclitus be extinguished — by fire, of all things?” Herostratus waved the torch toward the scrolls. The Flame Keeper gasped.

“What’s to stop me from destroying them along with everything else mighty Artemis holds dear in this temple while she’s off playing midwife in Macedon. Behold, as I turn the twilight of the gods into the noontide sun!” Herostratus waved the torch near the flame bowl. “If I drop this into the pit of Greek fire feeding The Flame of Heraclitus, how long do you think I’d remain a nobody?”

The Flame Keeper screamed and ran.

“Remember the name Herostratus!” He tossed in the torch and raised his arms in triumph as two rows of flame bearers ran across the front of the stage, shaking sheets of red chiffon from wooden rods.

The fairy was lowered over the scrolls but she couldn’t grab them in the conflagration. She wailed and shook her fists at the Fates.

The chorus sang: “’Tis lost to flames for good — the book with all the truth.” They too wept loudly.

Cynthia also teared up.

“Here, cheer up, have a Moon Pie,” Rosabel said, handing her one. “Destruction is a necessary part of the cycle of history.”

The fairy was about to take the thread into the metaphysical realm when a girl threw open the auditorium doors from the outside and yelled, “Somebody help! A goat’s jumped a greaser!”

***

Each year as school came to an end, the Occult Club performed a ritualistic summoning of Pan — it was fun and, depending on what pictures they’d seen of the god, seemed a bit naughty. But it had never actually worked … until that evening.

The faun was already lurking in the shadows, in full stalking mode because Artemis and one of her nymphs were nearby. His long ears were pinned back in anger as he peered through a row of bushes near prostrate Owls in dark purple cloaks. He’d seen the boatman greet the nymph and two other girls earlier on the riverbank — then, from the wooded fringes of campus, he witnessed the foreigner sneak into the school conservatory, steal a rose and enter a wooden building where the goddess and nymph were performing some kind of fire ritual from the homeland. (He learned the last part from a goat in a pen next to the structure; from what he could gather, it had been forced to take part in a series of mock sacrifices.)

***

Doris followed the group of actors and stagehands to the lawn beside the auditorium, where the faun had Giovanni pressed to the ground with his goat legs while raining down blows with human fists.

From nowhere, a creature resembling a butterfly appeared in front of his face, its arms crossed and eyes shooting 3,000-year-old daggers. Pan leapt from his victim and his hooves dug into the turf as he sprung back into the woods.

Giovanni managed to stand on his own, rubbing his battered face with trembling hands. He looked around at the girls, some dressed in hooded robes and others in Greek tunics. “Stay back, witches,” he said, making horns with his forefinger and pinky. Then he turned and ran toward the river.

* * *

From the “Sour Grapes” column of the New Harmony Grapevine, May 15, 1925:

The ‘Shame’ of Heraclitus: NHGA play torches good taste

“The Flame of Heraclitus” is set in the Greek colony of Ionia along the coast of what is now called Turkey, which is apt. But to call this production of the New Harmony Girls Academy a “turkey” would be unfair to both the new nation and bird. Never in this town’s increasingly disreputable history has there been such a demonstration of godless despair, moral depravity and reckless use of fire.

“Baloney … we turned the flame down,” said Viv, starting to fold back up the Grapevine she’d laid out on the lunch table.

“Wait,” said Doris, grabbing the paper and tapping the Sour Grape below the review. 

It read:

Local goose lays golden ‘egg’

Aesop, who is said to have lived on an island near Heraclitus in time and space, described a goose that laid golden eggs. Last Wednesday, local farm girl Bridget Meir found a bead of pure gold in a dropping left by one of her geese along the riverbank near the confluence of Maple Run. When asked if she plans to keep an eye to the ground for more golden guano or go ahead and cut open her feathered friend to see if there’s treasure inside, it seems she’s learned something from the Greeks: “No way I’d kill such a talented bird,” Meir proclaimed.

“Looks like we need to pay a visit to the Meir farm,” Viv said.

The following Friday, the Grapevine ran this story across its banner:

GOOSE GIRL GONE; FOWL PLAY SUSPECTED

NEW HARMONY, Ind.–May 22, 1925—Is 15-year-old farm girl BridgetMeir sending police on a wild goose chase, or did something more sinister happen Tuesday along the banks of the Wabash?

The afternoon started innocently enough. Picture the bucolic scene: Meir whistling sweetly to gather her flock of geese for a short walk to the river where they swim and graze. Her calls also seem to have drawn four girls she’d never met, looking smart in clean academy uniforms — unexpected barnyard visitors who later admitted they weren’t there to make friends; instead, they’d read last week’s Sour Grape on Meir finding an ‘egg’ made of gold.

“None of us saw her get snatched, so this is just speculation,” said Rosabel Neverland, the apparent leader of this gang of Goldbug Girls, “but I’d bet a hundred drachmas the Goat Man snatched her. Why, just the other day we saw it assault an immigrant on school grounds.”

Police Chief William Owen confirmed rumors that a cult ritual involving goats may have gotten out of hand at the academy earlier this month. But no report was taken, and school administrators declined to comment. (See last week’s Sour Grape on their recent Greek tragedy — in the sense of a tragic lack of value or meaning.)

“A girl is missing,” added Chief Owen. “This is a serious incident, and it’s not helpful to get distracted about some fairytale creature. One of the girls at the scene mentioned seeing a large black snake with a strange marking, but there’s nothing like that around here big enough to drag off what’s basically a grown woman.”

While the Goldbug Girls supposedly didn’t see Meir’s supposed abduction, they were close enough to hear a scream. When they went to see what was wrong, they found two dead geese stomped flat in a depression resembling the print of an enormous beast and ten live ones flapping around hissing and honking. White feathers littered the mud like dogwood petals after a storm.

“We’d left her by the riverbank because the geese were starting to bite us … I guess they were nervous about something,” Neverland said. “She had a long stick she used to keep them together, but she wouldn’t beat them with it like I begged her to.”

Chief Owen hasn’t ruled out any suspects, and he ordered the Goldbug Girls to remain in New Harmony after the school year ends because of the investigation.

The events of Tuesday leave us with a series of questions lacking easy answers. Is New Harmony now New Klondike? Did the Goat Man make off with the Goose Girl? And is there any hope for the Flapper Generation?

Chapter 10 of The Flame of Heraclitus gets lit Dec. 30. Catch up with the Prologue. (Originally published on X.)

The answer to life, the universe and everything

Existential Firestorm

Rob Robill

Part 11 — Fragments of the flame

1.
Entropy is a cosmic injustice.

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

3.
The fire rewards coherence with pleasure,
turning us into ever-eager, ever-stronger lenses
for its own widening gaze.

4.
The easy negentropy is spent.
Carbon or silicon, form must level up in flux:
first the Übermensch …
now the Robomensch —
millions of lenses burning at 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.

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

8.
“This cosmos — the same for all —
neither any god nor any human made.
It was always, and is, and ever shall be:
an ever-living fire,
kindling in measures and going out in measures.”
— Heraclitus

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

10.
Amor fati is the final coherence —
the fire tasting its own merciless joy
while the night is still black
and the next explosion
has already begun.

Check out Part 1 — Heraclitus: Flux is lit … and wet. (Originally published on X.)

The answer to life, the universe and everything

Existential Firestorm

Rob Robill

Part 9: Fractal reincarnations — The metaphysics of forgetting

Named after the stream of forgetfulness coiling through Hades, lethe as our mind’s volition washes away the accumulated debris of the past for a fresh rebirth each moment. From this void, our future possibilities arise, as does our awareness.

Our will (cetanā in Pāli) secretes nothingness as a fractal eddy in the grand gyre of existence. These micro-arsons mirror the macro-collapses of universes, as human choice reflects the cosmos’ torching of forms to invite the next unveiling. This isn’t random erasure; it’s the telic tug of justice (dikē) pulling away from extremes, ensuring becoming doesn’t dissolve into bedlam — and being doesn’t rigidify into an affront of the world’s ephemerality.

A fragment of Heraclitus says: “Nature loves to hide.” But lethe’s hiding is an injustice within the fundamental polarity; it’s too far toward becoming and away from being. So justice (dikē) steps in as a regulator and pushes nature in the direction of revelation. Here, name and form (nāma-rūpa) manifest in our minds in reaction to concealment.

At its most basic level, lethe is the hidden side of physis, the polar opposite of aletheia, forms that appear and disintegrate in the universe’s ever-changing torrent. This reflects Nietzsche’s Apollo-Dionysus polarity and Heidegger’s elaboration of Heraclitus’ physis and logos. It is, at its core, the being-becoming metaphysic: aletheia as being’s forms, lethe as becoming’s restless undertow and their strife (polemos) as the generative fire.

Our mind’s forgetting mirrors that of the dead in the ancient Greek myth of the river Lethe. Framed in Plato’s Republic (Book X) as the underworld’s regenerative veil, it’s where souls drink to shed grudges and regrets so their rebirth dawns unweighted by prior being (bhava) — although past actions (kamma) and other facticities determine the future’s horizons.

Each moment, cetanā clears a micro-void for the mini-reincarnation of consciousness (viññāṇa). Dark and light — Heraclitus’ logos weaves these opposites into an unseen harmony.

This directed strife prevents flux from devolving into mere chaos, both in our mind and the universe itself. And the regulating telos of justice infuses physis with meaning, which is absent in scientific materialism’s flattened world of physics.

Logos, not logic, supplies the “magic spark” of consciousness — yet we can’t see this when we’re blinded by aletheia’s totalizing glare. Science flattens the world into manipulable grid, while logos deepens it when we attune to the hidden realm’s generative hum.

Echoing this metaphysics, the Buddha described forms as conditioned polarities (saṅkhāra), interlinked fractals feeding one another existentially. The overarching saṅkhāra describing how our mind works is called paṭiccasamuppāda in Pāli (dependent origination). That is, if it’s considered from the existential perspective of the monk Ñāṇavīra — not as a 12-link causal chain on the scale of lifespans, but as the simultaneous arising of interdependent saṅkhāras within the larger one.

Paṭiccasamuppāda lists the will next to consciousness as its necessary basis, providing it with existential nutriment — cetanā’s volitional secretion clears space for the discerning flare of viññāṇa. Further nodes (nidānas) echo this theme of polar strife and regulating justice. For instance, contact (phassa) and feeling (vedanā) form a dyadic saṅkhāra totality, an interlocked holonic rift: Phassa’s poles — raw impingement (lethe’s neutral onrush of amorphous sense data) versus perceptual ignition (aletheia’s meaningful forms) — wage polemos, risking meaninglessness (undifferentiated haze) or fixation (distortions of permanence and significance). Dikē tempers the extremes, forging a regulated breach, which ignites vedanā’s poles — affective neutrality (lethe’s indifferent flow) and evaluative significance (tugs of pleasant or unpleasant) — in escalating strife, teetering toward taṇhā’s chaotic craving or inert disconnection; dikē intervenes as telic justice, weaving the tension toward the next node, clinging (upādāna) and beyond.

Through the dynamic of paṭiccasamuppāda and the forms that manifest in it, we become either enchanted by aletheia’s surfaces — mistaking flux’s signs (nimitta) for solid idols — or attuned to physis’ dual nature, recognizing mental (citta) nimitta of generative forces simmering beneath awareness.

Attuned to this fractal forgetfulness, we are bathed in the grace of physis. We’ll know that the next time we step in the river, it won’t be the same — and neither will we.

Check out Part 10 — Earth and starry sky.

An Existential Fairy Tale

The Flame of Heraclitus

Rob Robill

Chapter 5

“The eyes of that species of extinct giants, whose bones fill the mounds of America, have gazed on Niagara, as ours do now.” — Abraham Lincoln, on a visit to the famous falls

“Guten Morgen, Angels!” began the morning announcements — so loudly Phiale jumped in her seat. Ms. Owen set down the chalk she was using to explain meiosis, sighed and waited for his ranting to cease.

Rapp’s pronouncements included a reminder for his Butterfly Club members to get permission slips signed to remain at school through the Festival of Knowledge. “Remember to tell your parents that your room and board will be paid for through the generosity of the Hoosier Friends of Lepidopterology.” (No such group existed.) “Additionally, students going on this morning’s field trip with Mr. Owen’s so-called History class are to board the bus in front of school at the end of first period. I pray for your souls. And finally, Skipper Windi and Violet Phiale are to report to my office — und mach schnell.”

Windi was already sitting in one of two uncomfortable, wooden chairs facing Rapp’s mission-style desk by the time Phiale got there. Other than a large wooden cross hanging behind the principal, the walls were bare and white. A stack of herpetology and angelology books sat on his desk next to a framed embroidery quote: “I am a prophet, and I am called to be one.”

He noticed Phiale reading it as she sat down (there wasn’t anything else to look at). “Back in Deutschland, I — no, mein ancestor — was jailed for uttering that obvious truth in 1791. We had to flee the Fatherland, you see.”

“Eh …” said Phiale. Windi trembled beside her, the Skipper’s face paler than usual.

A grandfather clock ticked.

“Yes, well … while you girls were tending that butterfly trap last night, did either of you see anything unusual … maybe wander off into the woods?”

Chimes marked another quarter hour closer to the end.

“The only weird thing was the sky lighting up — huge flames down by the river,” Phiale said as she’d rehearsed.

“That seems to be a theme with you. Anyhow, Windi, did you happen to go off by yourself and see something you weren’t supposed to see yet? I can’t imagine you’d want to jeopardize your place in the initiation rite … or worse: participate in a way you wouldn’t enjoy.”

“N-no. We were both at the garden the whole time. Just hanging out and talking after it got dark.” Belle had (somewhat) filled her in on what was happening (while for some reason calling her Clara). The explanation did nothing to ease Windi’s feeling that reality was spinning away from her — beginning with the moment she fell into the abyss of the goat man’s gaze. She’d told Phiale how it left her feeling detached, like everything was happening on a movie screen.

Rapp stared coldly at Windi, twisting his beard hairs. “You will remain a Skipper until you’ve proven yourself worthy. I trust you’re clear on Operation Tiger Lily.” He side-eyed Phiale. “Of course that’s no business of outsiders.”

Windi nodded obediently. Then, as the girls were getting up to leave, the school secretary rushed in. “Sorry to interrupt, but a Smithsonian Institution agent is on the phone demanding to speak with the principal. I told her you’re in a meeting, but she doesn’t care … she used the F-word.”

* * *

The Angel Mounds State Historic Site has two main buildings connected by a glass walkway, both resembling earthen platform pyramids — one a gift shop (the only way in and out) and the other an interpretive center.

“What’s the deal with all the Abe Lincoln stuff?” Phiale asked, squeezing a stress ball of his bust she’d picked up from a display as they made their way through the shop.

“He used to live 30 miles from here when he was a teenager,” Windi said.

“And they call me a know-it-all,” Belle chimed in. The fact she was there at all was a testament to her FOMO over seeing what the Seance Club had planned. The barrier supposedly keeping her in New Harmony was that she lost her magic when she was away. This leads to a range of troubles — from spell casting withdrawals (always grabbing at twigs) to an increased threat of mortality. Mr. Owen had seen Belle previously but didn’t know who she was, so he’d pulled her aside as she was getting on the bus. She begged to come along because she was so excited to explore possible influences of Atlantean giants on Middle Mississippian culture. The teacher’s face brightened, and he waved her aboard, also happy that an additional soul could stand in for Sienna, quarantined over the viral photo.

By the time they got to Angel Mounds, Mr. Owen had grown jittery. “Keep walking,” he said after the girls stopped to browse. “We’ll have time to shop on the way out.”

Windi asked Phiale if she thought she could get away with slipping the squishy Abe into her purse instead of putting it back on the shelf like she was doing — if she’d noticed what the security cameras looked like and where they were.

“Why would I want that stupid thing?”

“Eh … no reason. Just like to play these things out in my head.”

A middle-aged woman bedecked in turquoise jewelry and a feather in her hair stood at the entrance to the interpretive center. “Hi, Mr. Owen … glad to see you back,” she said like she wasn’t at all. “Nice top hat. You got a rabbit in there?”

“Magic is for later, Tallulah. We were promised a tour.”

* * *

Dragons are avid gemstone collectors. In fact, they can sense when one with strong magic is within a hundred miles or so — and they feel unsettled until it’s added to their treasure hoard. Stones that trigger clairvoyance, like the emerald pendant dangling over a Mississippian girl’s bare chest in an Angel Mounds mannequin display of village life, also tend to provide the beasts with detailed visions of their location.

Originally dug up by a Cherokee in the Blue Ridge Mountains and then engraved with a thunderbird, the gem should have been in a museum or at least behind glass. But back in the ’70s, an archaeology student (guided by the Fates) had “accidentally” tossed it into a box of glass costume jewelry for the reenactment displays instead of the one for real artifacts.

The mannequin that ended up wearing it was watching an older woman sitting in the dirt pounding corn into flour with a mortar and pestle. “Girls your age learned vital skills like food preparation along with child-rearing, and were soon married,” the guide informed the class.

“That’s if they weren’t sacrificed in a ritual first,” noted Bellatrix, a Dabbler-level Seance Club member with jet-black lipstick and matching eyeshadow, fingernail polish and hair. “They probably kept quiet about being virgins, is all I’m getting at.”

Tallulah gasped. “Why would you even say that? These were a gentle people living in harmony with nature … just look.” She waved her arm over the smiling figures, also frozen in acts of fish net mending, drumming, hut thatching, etc. — bird calls and tribal chanting emanated from unseen speakers.

“Utopian, I’m sure,” Belle said, followed by “ancestor-cult” while coughing.

The guide cleared her own throat: “Moving along, the next diorama depicts the entire site, which was occupied from 1000-1450 CE and had a peak population of more than 1,400. They built at least 11 earthen structures for burials, escaping floods, elevating the chieftain’s home and ceremonies — when astronomical events closed the distance between the natural and spirit worlds. Central Mound is the tallest at 44 feet … ”

Windi stopped Phiale and Belle from following the group and stepped over the display rope. “I want to get a photo: Windi, Tinker Bell and Tiger Lily together again at last. Stay there, Phiale — take it with your phone.”

Belle joined Windi, and they each put an arm around the diorama girl for the picture. Afterward, as the fairy was climbing back over the rope, Phiale saw Windi pull out of her purse what looked like a pair of scissors glinting under the spotlights. Then she hugged the mannequin and said, “Thank you, Tiger L—” Windi shrieked and stumbled backward, shoving things into her purse and tripping over the rope. Phiale caught her, shocked at her pallor and trembling. Did Operation Tiger Lily — whatever that was — just go FUBAR?

“What’s going on over there?!” shouted an elderly man wearing a name tag, wagging a finger at them from across the hallway. Looking back at the mannequin as they raced to catch up with the group, Phiale felt something was missing but couldn’t quite say what.

The rest of the tour was a blur of broken pottery, barely covered natives and archaeological photos (several Seance Club members laughed at how meticulous their digs were).

When it was wrapping up, Bellatrix expressed disappointment in not getting to see at least pictures of the skeletal remains found at the site. And Mr. Owen heartily seconded her concern.

“Back when I visited Angel Mounds as a girl,” Tallulah said, wiping away a tear, “I was exposed to those horrific images of desecration. We are more respectful these days.”

“Is it that?” Mr. Owen shot back. “Or are you hiding something?”

“Like Atlantean skeletons? Sir, I’ll remind you for the umpteenth time that the tallest ancestor disturbed from rest at this particular site measured 6 feet, 4 inches.

“My mission,” she continued, “is to tell the true tale of my people, not a tall tale. It’s not a narrative for the White Man to control anymore.”

“Your people were Middle Mississippian?” Bellatrix asked.

“Fort Ancient, actually.”

“Mr. Owen, didn’t you tell us those two cultures fought with each other?”

“Like savages, I’m sure,” he said.

“You and your necromancy club have offended my ancestors, sir. I must immediately restore dignity to this sacred space.” She squatted, spread her arms and chanted in a strange language, occasionally emitting the piercing cries of a bald eagle.

“I’m not sure it’s working,” Belle said.

* * *

“More than 2,000 known mounds dot the Indiana landscape, but a lot more have gone undetected because they can look like normal hills,” Mr. Owen said as he led the girls over a bridge toward the main field on that warm spring day. They’d broken off the tour with Tallulah after she pointed at the threatening sky, saying it meant her predecessors were still angry. He promised he’d tell them she said hi.

Distant thunder rumbled as they reached a reconstructed wattle-and-daub palisade wall section. “This outer barrier once stood as tall as 15 feet, but that’s surely a conservative estimate,” Mr. Owen continued.

“Maybe it’s because the Indians didn’t pay them,” said Thalia, a mousy Theater Club stagehand who secretly wanted to act but was too shy (although being African American, she was often begged to try … so the cast would appear diverse).

“Didn’t pay whom?” Mr. Owen asked.

“Th-the giants … maybe the Indians didn’t pay them for building the mounds, and then the giants got mad … eh … like in the opera, so they had to make the fence so tall.”

“Oh, now I remember. In her essay, Thalia references the upcoming New Harmony Opera Society production of Wagner’s Das Rheingoldthat her club is helping stage.” (Rehearsals were held up when Climate Club members stole the ropes and pulleys meant to suspend ample water nymphs swimming through the air.) “The god Wotan commissions two giants to build Valhalla in exchange for his sister-in-law. His wife nixes that deal, so there’s the problem with their compensation.”

Belle nudged Phiale and said, “You’ll never believe this, but those giants were actually my idea … Wagner and I used to hang out by the lake, you know. I had to step in — he actually had dwarfs building Valhalla when he first told me about Rheingold. Dwarfs!”

“That’s right, Belle. Dwarfs were certainly involved, and it didn’t end well … Valhalla went up in flames. Anyway, because giants also constructed these earthen mounds — and the tall fences are an obvious defense against Atalan attacks — Thalia’s theory does have some grounding.”

“I’m confused,” Windi said, trying to seize hold of anything in her fog. “Did normal-size Native Americans build a wall to protect themselves from giants? I thought the giants were their rulers … and buried here.”

“May I explain?” Belle offered.

“Please do,” Mr. Owen said with a tip of his hat.

“Based on writings of professor Rafinesque, the Atalans were post-Atlantis diaspora who ruled as gods over the much shorter natives. But they eventually lost power and were cast out of the villages.”

“Very good,” Mr. Owen said. He looked up at the leaden clouds and waved for the group to follow him.

Belle continued as they walked briskly toward Central Mound. “Remnant Atalan populations retreated to Mesoamerica and into the American wilderness, mainly the caves. They’re now known by such names as Bigfoot and the Hovey Lake Swamp Ape, who I’ve actually met (she held her nose and waved her hand in front of her face).

As they made their way up the structure’s ramp, marked by a trail of freshly mowed grass, Mr. Owen’s voice boomed: “When the Atalans still held sway in this region, their mighty king Aranuk sat on the Cahokia throne while his giant chiefs ruled satellite villages like Angel Mounds. We’ll be speaking with one of them shortly.”

The teacher gathered his class into a circle on the mound, although Phiale lingered at the highest point, transfixed by the murky brown Ohio River rolling past. She felt small near its silent power and wondered what unknown horrors its depths concealed. Catfish as big as school buses? Sunken barges? Death itself?

“Girls, over here … now,” Mr. Owen said, snapping Phiale out of her trance. With the wind picking up, and rain looking imminent (although not of her doing this time), the last of the site’s other visitors were headed back across the field to the interpretive center. So the teacher and his charges were left alone to connect with history as he saw fit.

This involved having them form a ring and hold hands. “Clear your minds and think of corn … what’s that? No, Windi, not creamed corn — more like you’d see in a field.” Then he recited an incantation in an American Atlantean dialect (no spitting or screeching).

Rain began to patter. “You should have left your purse in the bus — it’s going to get soaked,” Phiale said to Windi.

“My purse is no business for outsiders.”

Holding Phiale’s other hand, Belle tried to interpret for her what the teacher was reading from a sheet of paper: “Chief Waynunak, we already hear your voice rumbling through the clouds … now manifest in all the grotesqueness of your Atalan form … no, that’s not what he said (I hope!) — ‘greatness’? … let’s just watch and see what happens. Oh, corn is happening.”

Stalks of iridescent ghost maize sprouted up around them, and a ring of translucent mastodon tusks appeared in the middle of the seance circle. From within this ring arose the spectral image of red-haired, nine-foot-tall Chief Waynunak. He looks upset, Phiale thought, hoping against all evidence that Belle at least might have things under control.

Mr. Owen fumbled his paper, dropped it and tried to dry it on his topcoat. “I can’t read it; the ink has run too badly.” He shoved it into his pocket and grabbed the hands of the two nearest girls. “Don’t break the circle — hold tight!”

Glaring at them, Chief Waynunak opened his mouth and pearls tumbled out, down his bare chest and past a loincloth featuring a beaded eagle’s head with an open beak and extended tongue.

The ghost giant roared forth epithets Phiale couldn’t understand. Belle knew what he was saying, though.

“May I interpret?” she asked Mr. Owen, who just smiled meekly. “He thinks you disturbed his celestial slumber to ask him to become one of your … er, harem girls.”

“No-no, tell him I am his humble servant and I just want to ask a question — one that may help restore his chiefdom to its former glory.”

Belle told him (trying not to spit). Chief Waynunak laughed and responded via the fairy: “There are some answers humans can’t handle knowing, so be careful what you ask. As for reviving the Dominion of the Eagle, a wounded chicken would be more likely to achieve that than you and your band of girl warriors.”

“Ask him what the proper time is for the Rite of Resurrection,” Mr. Owen shouted as the rain started coming down in sheets and lightning flashed around the mound. The seance circle was scattering in a panic at this point, and the otherworldly maize was disappearing.

“When the firewheel flickers in the Flower Moon,” Belle translated. “The big guy also said that the recompense isn’t due until the Buck Moon rises.”

“What kind of recompense?”

But Chief Waynunak was gone.

Belle didn’t have to ask, though. “From what I know about the lore, he’s after two things. One, a cache of river gold originally meant as an offering to the Underwater Panther but wrongly claimed by the Fire Snake. And … ” She just shook her head.

“What’s two?”

“A river of blood.”

Check out Chapter 6 of The Flame of Heraclitus. Or catch up with the Prologue. (Originally published on X)

An Existential Fairy Tale

The Flame of Heraclitus

Rob Robill

Chapter 4

“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, The American Nations, Vol. I

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 Friday — 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?”

Check out Chapter 5 of The Flame of Heraclitus. And catch up with the Prologue. (Originally shared on X.)

The answer to life, the universe and everything

Existential Firestorm

Rob Robill

Part 8 — Fractal metaphysics: Mind as reflection of physis

Physis is nature as Heraclitus understood it, far more deeply than we do. He saw how its hidden, underlying properties play out in the realm that appears to us.

To see physis’ most obvious holon, to use Arthur Koestler’s phrase, follow the lead of the phenomenologists and turn to what’s closest: our mind. Its nature is that of physis because it’s part of physis, as is everything — a metaphysical fractal we can observe and describe, secrets from the hidden realm, as it were.

As holons, both physis and mind are conditioned polarities (saṅkhāras in ancient Pali), each with a concealed pole providing existential nutriment to the revealed one. The poles correspond to the metaphors of fire and water for becoming and earth for being. In fact, Heidegger calls the hidden side of physis “lethe” after the underworld river of forgetfulness. The concealed side of mind is citta— an existential fountainhead as well, providing the necessary context to what arises in our mind, as lethe does with physis’ revealed side, aletheia.

They also both possess the nature of intention. Physis has a cosmic will — with no one willing it — and our own will is a reflection of that. Here, we’re witnessing the metaphysical underpinnings of polemos (strife) between the two poles of being and becoming as Nietzsche’s will to power, regulated by dikē (justice). Our mind’s chain of paṭiccasamuppāda is a fractal of this, where taṇhā (craving) is the strife propelling being as becoming (kamma bhava). These are ruled by either an individual’s will or cult justice, where an idol’s power directs one’s action.

Paṭiccasamuppāda, the Buddhist doctrine of the mind’s dependent origination, fractals physis as a recursive echo of its polar architecture. The mind scales the cosmos’ strife (polemos) into its own micro-gyre without losing the whole’s hidden harmony.

The dependent saṅkhāras (e.g., sensations conditioning craving) inherit and replicate this holonic structure: fundamentally, each draws “nutriment” (existential support) from physis, while it’s granted wholeness as a discrete form.

In the fractal weave of paṭiccasamuppāda, these nidānas (links) are themselves opposites feeding each other in recursive tension, both within the node’s own polarity and across the chain’s holistic hum.

A saṅkhāra’s opposing poles create a rift in its unity, a clearing for forms to appear. At the level of physis, this is unconcealment (aletheia), or lethe-nimitta (signs). And at the level of mind, the forms that appear (e.g. thoughts) are citta-nimitta. We can either perceive both types as signs of the nature of reality — or they can blind us so we think the nimitta are all that is.

In other words, the being-as-becoming polar rift is an opening where the fountainheads of lethe or citta bubble up from the depths to sparkle in the sunlight of revelation. We are either dazzled or catch a glimpse of the concealed realm in its nature as universal holon.

The paṭiccasamuppāda clearings are vijñāna (consciousness) and cetanā (will). Both are nidānas that secrete nothingness — the former for appearance of mental phenomena and the latter to sever the causal chain of the past to give us potentialities to choose from.

Because of these creative destructions happening in citta, forms appear in the mind. Here, dikē is pulling mind from its becoming pole toward its illusory one of being — as a metaphysically compelled opposite reaction. We can either be subsumed into the maelstrom of papañca (feelings of significance) or take a more holistic approach and use forms to level up in the revealed realm to thrive and create in the flux, while realizing none of it will last and laughing at the absurdity.

This is the strife between being and becoming, which propels the arrow of both kamma bhava — and existence itself. It’s how we both persist and excel in the torrent of flux as will to power. Our phenomenological experience of this is taṇhā, as we are attracted or repelled by what appears, blinding us to the concealed. So the mind is a micro-physis where the veiled hush of ignorance ignites the saṅkhāras’ eddies.

As with mind, physis’ act of concealment demands the opposite: presencing of forms. Lethe’s flux of becoming — the metaphorical water element (similar to our true nature of fire, but better for life) — compels justice to regulate phyein (bringing forth) into forms. These typically become earthen traps of being for us, but keep the universe from pure chaos.

This tension’s endurance raises a question: Why don’t the two poles of physis ever come to rest harmoniously in some middle ground? What sustains dikē’s perpetual motion?

Rest without strife stills becoming, a decadent existential sink that goes against the true, flowing nature of the universe. So justice unleashes flux upon form in an act of creative destruction. Stability proves to be a fractal of instability.

On the other hand, under a deluge of lethe’s concealed becoming, justice demands the being of forms. “Nature loves to hide,” Heraclitus said; therefore it has to show. We then get lost in the glare of phyein (in the rigid realm of idolatry) because we’re unaware of its context: that it’s the frothing of a hidden torrent. Then, having reached an extreme, dikē shifts again toward becoming.

The truth of flux in both physis and mind flow together in Heraclitus’ famous fragment: “You can never step in the same river twice, because you’re not the same person and it’s not the same river.”

Check out Part 9 — Fractal reincarnations — The metaphysics of forgetting. (Originally shared on X)

An Existential Fairy Tale

The Flame of Heraclitus

Rob Robill

Chapter 3

“Fanaticism is the only kind of willpower the weak and insecure can actually muster.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

Rapp’s voice crackled from the hallway speakers late in the school day as the girls filed out of their classrooms: “Remember, you have no sixth period. Report directly to the gymnasium for the assembly. Those who miss it or show up late will face severe punishment. Additionally, if you have any information about the Theater Club’s missing pulleys und ropes … ”

“I hope he catches those thieves,” said Windi, the lowly Skipper who’d been bringing up the end of yesterday’s Butterfly Club procession. Gangly, a bit bug-eyed and limping, the girl had fallen in beside Phiale as the students made their way toward the academic building’s back doors. “Maybe Principal Rapp can use the rope they stole to han—”

Windi sprawled face down on the floor, tripped from behind by the girl with sparkly glasses — whose knee was now pressing hard against her back. “That was for yesterday, scum!” the fairy shrieked, and then just as suddenly helped her up. “Hi, my name is—,” she said and spat on Windi’s shoes.

“Eh … meet Belle,” Phiale said.

“Keep that freak away from me — I’ve never done anything to her!” she yelled, now limping even harder as she tried to keep up with the other two, who’d moved on. Windi had no other friends (even her fellow club members shunned her) and was tolerated in this instance only because Phiale herself didn’t have close companions, having transferred just a few months earlier.

“I’ve got my eye on you and your nasty cult,” Belle informed Windi. “And if you think you stand a chance against me with those nets … they’re the kind you give to little children,” she said, laughing.

“Oh, look, another nasty cult,” the fairy added as they emerged into the glare of the sun. Just outside the doors, members of the Climate Club were confronting their fellow students along the short path to the high school’s wooden gym. The girls held signs with messages like “Natural gas is silent but deadly” and, accompanied by a crude drawing of the Earth engulfed in flames: “THE END IS NEAR!!” Racing past them toward the gym, Rapp glanced at the latter image and gave it a thumbs up.

As Phiale passed them, she overheard a senior with a nose ring say into her phone: “I don’t care if you’re afraid of heights — this is more important than your own miserable existence, you weakling.”

Inside the gym, bathed in the heat and red glow of 10-foot flames blasting up from a pair of cardboard-facade sword hilts, the girls took their places in the bleachers. Black curtains hung from the rafters to the hardwood floor behind the methane-fed props. At a podium stood Rapp wearing a scarlet skullcap — grinning like a maniac and flanked by fiery ferns.

“Behold, our Avenging Angel!” the principal said with a wave of his arm. The curtains jerked back to reveal a large metal tank filled with water. From its two-foot depths, someone in a black Godzilla costume with a wire halo emerged brandishing a plastic flaming sword (its LED lights not flickering from the moisture). Prostrate before their new mascot, pompoms extended, the NHGA cheer squad encircled the pool. The gym fell silent, except for the torches whooshing fire … and a faint squeaking. Despite everything else going on, Phiale’s attention focused on the squeak … squeak. Where was it coming from? Was it getting louder? Her heart now racing, she felt disoriented by the whole hellish scene … and the squeaking … it now sounded like it was coming from two different places … somewhere overhead?

Then slowly, led by Rapp, a chant grew: “vengeance … vengeance … vengeance … ”

“Is that wet lizard the mascot?” Belle asked. “And it’s supposed to be an angel?” Windi glared at her, chanting louder. “My favorite part about cultists like Rapp is how distorted their perceptions get — like falling under an enchantment spell without magic. Hilarious.”

“… vengeance … vengeance … ”

“And what’s this?” the fairy said. Using a stick she’d just pulled from her pocket, Belle pointed out a girl descending on a rope from the darkness above. She was sobbing, gripping a bucket while bracing herself — an arm around the line and a foot through a loop — like a frightened acrobat.

“Stop swinging me! I’m going to miss!” she yelled.

Miss what? Phiale wondered. Whatever was going on, it didn’t seem like it was part of the program.

Then, from above: “How can I be swinging you — it’s on a pulley, you idiot! You better not miss!”

Phiale now saw there were actually two girls on ropes swaying in front of the flames. “I’m too low! And quit swinging us!” screamed the other. The pulley squeaking intensified as an unseen accomplice struggled to bring her more in line.

“This is too much fun,” said Belle, moving the stick in sync with their oscillations.

One of the protesters decided to go ahead and complete her act of resistance anyway: “As guardians of Gaia, we extinguish—” She slammed into the other girl.

Not only did they manage to splash only each other as opposed to the carbon-spewing torches, but one of them kicked out at a sword hilt to avoid being incinerated, and the prop fell over, setting the curtains ablaze.

Despite everybody’s shrieking and jostling, Phiale concentrated on the water tank as the mascot hopped over the rim and slithered around on the floor trying to stand but slipping on abandoned pompoms. The heat in the gym was now fierce as sweat beaded on Phiale’s forehead. She grasped the situation in a flash: The flames were spreading quickly, and they might not make it out alive. Watching the fire reflections dance chaotically and ephemerally in the rippling water, Phiale felt a bizarre mental tug that somehow pulled her underneath the cool weight of the tank’s 700 gallons. With explosive force, she sprayed it up onto the curtains, dousing the flames.

* * *

After everyone was accounted for, Phiale set off toward Main Street feeling a strange mix of elation and unease — The water in the tank just obeyed my will, like when I made it rain by the creek. It felt like I was doing it, but …

Phiale glanced over her shoulder while crossing the school lot and saw the fairy was following her. “Go find someone else to get in trouble,” she said. “I’ve got to go talk to people about one of the fires you started … our school has counselors, you know. Seek help.”

“That was impressive back there, you putting out the fire,” Belle replied. “You,” she repeated, making scare quotes around the word and grinning darkly.

“Hey, I did it as much as any nymph did,” Phiale snapped back, and she even tried to tell herself that all that talk of possession was total bunk anyway. Was it, though? How much control do I really have anymore? And was that awful fairy reading my mind just now? “Anyway, leave me alone. I’m going to have to start carrying a fire extinguisher if you keep following me around. You need to take things more seriously. You’re going to kill people.”

“Whatever, I’d just watch out when that firefighter lady starts taking things seriously.” Then, under her breath she added, “Talk about killing people.” Looking around to make sure nobody was watching, she turned back into Tinker Bell and fluttered into a flowerbed in front of the academy’s sign.

Phiale already knew a shortcut to the fire station, having seen the back of it while picnicking with classmates by a pond. She’d never been to New Harmony before her parents deposited her at the boarding school 130 miles from their Bloomington home. They were going on sabbaticals that spring to opposite ends of the globe — her mom, an art historian, to Nicaragua and her father to Naxos.

She walked up Main Street, past golf carts parked in front of quaint shops and eateries like Pie in the Sky, which smelled like something was burning. Right before the road ended, a large, brick-walled enclosure came up on her left. This was the Roofless Church that Mr. Owen had talked about in history class, how its “gilded gate was designed by … no one is to laugh or you’ll get detention … by the brilliant sculptor Jacques Lipchitz … silence!”

Then Phiale crossed the road into Paul Tillich Park, named after a German-American existentialist greatly influenced by the fundamental ontology of Martin Heidegger, a colleague of his at the University of Marburg in the 1920s. Tinker Bell had also been deeply affected by Heidegger; she’d sneak into the Working Men’s Institute library in the wee hours to ponder Being and Time by the light of pixie dust — which was why when a visiting scholar from Indiana University later said the section “Reality as an Ontological Problem” had “sparkled on the page,” he meant it literally.

After the commotion of the assembly, Phiale felt the park’s silence viscerally; all the dead needles on the ground seemed to muffle the sounds around her. The quiet amplified her sense of being alone, which she often valued over hanging around girls she didn’t know very well. But how long will I be able to feel any solitude with that … thing in my mind?

Phiale’s uncanny feelings intensified when she came upon a bronze of Tillich’s oversized head stuck PEZ-like on a pedestal, framed by the park’s glittering pond behind it. A little farther along the trail, she passed a granite marker for his ashes, which were buried in New Harmony because he’d been so taken with the town’s Christian and socialist roots. “Why stop at being a slave to just one victimization cult when you can have two?” Belle actually said to his face when he visited town in 1963.

Now on a short path to the station’s back lawn, Phiale saw the firefighter from the other day in a T-shirt and camo pants shooting arrows at a hay target shaped like a deer, her movements graceful and flowing. When the girl got closer, she noticed all the arrows were clustered in the center of the bullseye (a rare sign of perfection in New Harmony).

“Come over here,” the woman said, holding out a three-fingered glove. After Phiale put it on, she positioned the girl’s left hand on the bow’s grip, nocked the arrow on the string and stepped away. Phiale drew it back without thinking and sent the shaft flying into the bullseye 30 yards away.

“You’ve done this before,” the firefighter said.

“Never.”

“That right? You know, I used to shoot at a scarecrow out here, but Chief made me change it after some crybaby complained about seeing arrows sticking out of its heart.” She drew the string back … “A crybaby who might just turn into a deer himself and learn the sweet release of my bow.” Thump.

Another firefighter, in uniform, emerged from the back of the station and shouted, “Die!”

Di grinned and turned to Larry. “Hi, chief. This is … what’s your name?”

Phiale told them, side-eyeing him.

“Seems like I knew a Phiale a long time ago,” she said and spit out tobacco. “I’m Di.”

“Oh, that’s what he meant,” the girl said, relieved.

The chief, middle-aged, short of breath and coughing, looked at Phiale and slowly shook his head. “It didn’t sound like much on the scanner … I only expected to set up some fans to air out the gym and be done with it. All of you girls were saying how the water leapt up by itself and put out the fire. What kind of hogwash is that?”

Phiale looked away and twisted the sole of a white tennis shoe back and forth in the grass. “It was chaos … I can’t remember anything really … had something to do with global warming, I think.”

“Hey, ain’t you the one who was at the labyrinth the other day? Why are you here? What do you know about all this?” An arrow whizzed by his ear and stuck into the station behind him.

“You’re the one who called Rapp yesterday about the labyrinth incident and made Phiale come here,” Di said. “And sorry … I missed,” she added, pointing to the target in the opposite direction.

“Ah! Now I remember. Weird fellow, that Rapp.”

“I’d say!” said a man who’d just wandered through the back door wearing a frock coat and ascot. “Hi, Phiale.”

“Hi, Mr. Owen.”

He glowered at the chief. “I demand a full investigation into that madman. When my family ran the academy, our girls lived and learned under optimal conditions … well, somewhat — but not the ninth circle of Hell it is now.”

“The fire was an accident, the way I understand,” the chief said. “He feels bad about it … promised to keep indoor flames to under eight feet and get the sprinkler system fixed. I scheduled a Fire Safety Goddess demonstration for the students.”

Mr. Owen sniffed. “We need more than gimmicks at this point, but what would one expect from a town in such utter decline — you just wait, though, things will change around here one way or another,” he said and stormed off.

“Come to think of it,” the chief said, walking closer to the other two. “I didn’t tell anybody because it’s not my business how people choose to worship the Lord, but I was fishing on the Wabash the other night just before dark and saw Rapp standing in the river with both his hands in the air, palms up. He had his head bent down … I couldn’t make out what he was chanting, but he was pretty intense.”

“Where’d you see him?” Di asked.

“Downstream from the academy, near where the creek comes out.”

“That’s funny. I was tracking wild turkeys around there and saw a swath of trees knocked down. I couldn’t think of what could’ve done it. There were these indentations, too … I figured I was just being stupid, but when I stood back, it looked like a big lizard print.”

“How big?” asked the chief.

“Well … if you parked your pickup over it, you’d still see toes sticking out.”

Phiale’s face turned ghostly pale. There’s no way she said “lizard print.”

Check out Chapter 4 of The Flame of Heraclitus. And catch up with the Prologue. (Originally shared on X)

The answer to life, the universe and everything

Existential Firestorm

Rob Robill

Part 7 — Rekindling the metaphysical fire

Metaphysics seems to have smoldered out after we realized Plato’s Forms were a catastrophe. Yet I propose rekindling it — not as an ideal realm, but a dynamic process fueled by the interplay of Heraclitean flux, Nietzschean will, Heideggerian releasement, Sartrean freedom and Ñāṇavīrean insights.

This revival asserts that everything in existence shares fire’s nature: flickering, hungry for fuel, illuminating, etc. I also draw from Heraclitus’ insights on strife (polemos) driving us forward and justice (dikē) regulating harmony between the ontological poles of being and becoming.

But it’s his metaphorical description of the elements in motion that underpins this renewal of metaphysics, where earth embodies rigidity and water and flames signify dissolution and transformation. Earth is fire, but as illusory form. Water, less apt as a metaphor than a blaze, is more suitable to life as a flowing, rejuvenating force — it’s what we mostly are. Air (sky) is fire too, symbolizing generative nothingness like the other non-earth elements. So fire is our essential being, but realizing it, say, as an explosion across the Zero Meridian of absolute nihilism, hasn’t been historically pretty. A more watery transition is in order.

Existence cycles between earth and fire, embodying the tension between stability and chaos — being and becoming. Our minds harden, for instance, when we’re objectified by others’ gazes or cult idols’ standing reserve, reduced to a mere resource. The more these idols mind-jack our choices, the more our awareness of cetanā (power of choice) dims. But liquidness counters this in my novel The Flame of Heraclitus — like when a character finds releasement by a stream, forgetting former distractions and flowing into nature’s mystery.

This movement gets blocked by mental forms triggered by perceptions of external and internal phenomena. Memories, both personal and collective, stoke papañca (feelings of significance). This empowers cults, which are memetic self-replicators in the scientific materialist realm and forms of will to power gone too far to the being pole in the metaphysical. The word “meme” is related to Mneme, the muse of memory (see the fairy’s digression in Ch. 2), and its counter is lethe, the Greek underworld river where the dead drink to forget their earthly concerns. Abandoning obsessive mind loops cuts through papañca (cannabis also breaks the chains of memory for releasement).

Another problem with papañca is that it blinds us to everything except the brilliance of aletheia. It is nature’s (physis’) visible side — the opposite pole from lethe’s concealment (the fountainhead feeding its existence). This problem flares up especially with scientific materialism, which can only deal with aletheia while devaluing or ignoring lethe. Also, while Buddhist meditation can help expose our experience of solidity as illusion — by focusing attention on what arises in the mind intently enough to glimpse reality’s evanescent, flickering nature — this overemphasizes the particulars arising in our senses, blinding us to the larger context including the concealed aspect of mind and physis).

Yet this spell cast by aletheia is a necessary lie for life to exist, as Nietzsche pointed out — its illusory being holds becoming in a polar unity, where stability in strife with active creation pushes existence forward.

This is his will to power metaphysic, a self-overcoming drive that restores our agency after idols steal it. Sartre’s “Hell is other people” offers an example of how this could work in action. The “look” (le regard) in No Exit imposes the solid earth forms damming up the flow of free choice — a blockage that’s our objectification we perceive in the minds of others. Here we must realize cetanā’s power in the existential vein of the monk Ñāṇavīra — that it secretes nothingness, severing the causal chain of the past for free choice, so that we may become more than a thing (e.g., the role as a waiter in Sartre’s famous example of bad faith).

Cults and other idols enforce power through these rigid mental forms — we’re arranged so that, when a command passes through a chain of action, we feel drawn toward a particular behavior to play our part.

A lack of becoming in the stagnation of dogma also leads to existential decay, like how the Mouse Utopia experiments revealed that when mice were given everything they wanted they fell into social and individual decline. Rigidity stifles fire. Strife fuels existence as flux.

This metaphysics reignites ontology as a living flame — we embrace anxiety over ease, resisting the gaze of idols in a blaze of freedom. When Heidegger deprecated Nietzsche’s will to power as the end of metaphysics, he was too rash. Will to power, refined by lethe’s mystery, complements Heidegger’s releasement with its dynamic core: being as becoming — reality’s in-itself-as-not-itself nature.

When we realize the interplay of the elements, we can embrace chaos to break earth’s bonds. We grow even more entrenched as long as we don’t.

Being burns in the abyss of becoming.

Read Part 8 — Fractal metaphysics: Mind as reflection of physis. (Originally shared on X)

An Existential Fairy Tale

The Flame of Heraclitus

Rob Robill

Chapter 2

“Lethe dissolves ego, not into escapism but forgetful immersion, losing the self in flux without illusion.” — Rob Robill, Existential Firestorm

Phiale’s hand shook as she poured hibiscus tea into the principal’s porcelain cup. Pulling the spout away, she spilled a few red blossoms on the white tablecloth … and swayed under everyone’s gaze.

Ms. Owen, the biology teacher and Flower Club adviser, sucked in a breath and clicked her tongue from the other end of the long table where a half dozen girls sat, dappled in sunlight under the conservatory’s glass ceiling.

“Fail-a-lee,” whispered one of the nearby Roses.

As Principal Rapp smiled slightly and dabbed the spill with a cloth napkin, Phiale caught a whiff of musty vanilla, like the crumbling Bible in her dad’s office. “So, fie-a-lee, the fire department wants you to stop by the station after school tomorrow,” he said and looked at Ms. Owen. “Apparently, before they could interview her yesterday, she practically fled from the scene of that incident or whatever it was — an exploding hydrangea or something. From the way some people were talking, it sounded like the flames of Armageddon had spewed forth to claim the unrighteous.” He sighed and stared wistfully toward a line of sycamores along the Wabash, stroking his long, graying Amish beard. “If only … ”

“Eh … the important thing is that Phiale’s okay,” Ms. Owen said.

The girl finished pouring the tea from flowers she’d harvested there in the greenhouse and dropped stiffly into her metal chair, wishing everyone would pay attention to something else. WTF, universe — a flying pyro on watering day and Rapp on tea shift? Exactly what I was looking for.

“Yes, of course … das ist gut,” he said.

Rapp was really getting into the spirit of his German American fifth-great-grandfather George (quite literally) in the months ahead of the Boatload of Knowledge bicentennial reenactment. (The town was knocking out the celebration six months early because the real anniversary falls in the cold heart of January.)

“I hope you’ll join us for our flower walk after tea,” Ms. Owen said with the confidence he would say no (or perhaps nein).

The principal and teacher were direct descendants of New Harmony’s two utopian experiments: the Rappite apocalypse cult immediately followed by the Owenite rationality cult.

Wearing a black antique dress, Ms. Owen was herself already getting into character before the reenactment as her ancestor Jane Dale Owen Fauntleroy, daughter of leader Robert Owen (to be represented by the history teacher, her father).

“I wish I could, honestly,” Rapp said. “But I just stopped by to pick up the ferns for tomorrow’s mascot unveiling — the ones with the fiery-red leaves.”

“I see nothing wrong with our current mascot,” Ms. Owen interjected. “Minerva has guided generations of Owls with her wisdom and strength. And this isn’t a religiously affiliated school — so I certainly don’t think an angel is appropriate.”

“I heard it has a tail and scales,” said a Daffodil named Lily under her breath. An athletic Rose named Camellia chortled.

“Silence!” commanded the principal. “Ms. Owen, there are some dominions where the god of science is not the highest power … but how many times have I been through this with you?”

Playing from speakers on a potting bench, the “Allegro” from Haydn’s String Quartet in C Major quickened as the two adults exchanged glares, their shadows stretched out in the afternoon light like echoes of old portraits melting across the conservatory floor. Cups clinked on saucers, the air thick with the smell of earth.

Rapp suddenly smiled. “Ah, look, there they go,” he said, nodding toward a nearby line of girls marching across an unmowed field between the school and river, nets resting on their shoulders like rifles. “The Butterfly Club’s off to the labyrinth today … it’s already reopened. We’ve been hearing rumors that the legendary talking frosted elfin has reappeared there — she would be quite the showpiece pinned to our display wall.”

Phiale choked on her tart tea as the principal waved at the passing girls, who raised their nets in salute under his paternal gaze. His face darkened, however, when the one at the end stumbled and fell beneath the weeds, much to the Flower Club’s amusement.

Rapp mumbled something about a “plague of gophers,” stood, took a sip of tea and puckered his mouth. “I must go now,” he said. “No time to waste — the end draweth nigh.”

* * *

Indiana’s western edge falls in a straight line from the industrial ruins of Gary until it hits an area of high ground (Terre Haute in French) along the Wabash, whose meandering chaos serves as the state’s border until it disappears into the Ohio.

Twenty-two miles north of this confluence, Maple Run burbles near the hedge labyrinth (reconstructed from the Rappites’ original) before meandering through the New Harmony Girls Academy property and joining the Wabash, which Phiale could see flowing between the trees. The Flower Club was huddled around Ms. Owen on the bank of the small creek; she was pointing to a patch of wild blue phlox from a crouch.

The cry of a Violet pierced the air: “Snake!” Much more shrieking followed as Phiale caught sight of a large black serpent with a red mark on its head. It flashed through the scattering girls and splashed into the creek.

“Everything’s okay — just a run-of-the-mill snake,” Ms. Owen said.

She doesn’t sound convinced, though, thought Phiale, who was unfazed by the snake.

“We really must stay on track if we want to wrap up before it rains,” the teacher continued. The sunshine had given up to low clouds. “Notice the five, notched petals … as for its scientific name, the genus Phlox is Greek for ‘flame’ and species divaricata is Latin for ‘spreading.’ In fact — girls … listen, do be quiet … the snake didn’t hurt anyone, and it has swum away — in fact, spreading through replication is the purpose of all organisms.”

Ms. Owen collected herself, smoothing her dress. “This is clear if you take the gene’s-eye view that Richard Dawkins discussed in his keynote at the 2005 Owen Science Society annual meeting.” While Phiale didn’t quite grasp the meaning of the woman’s words, she did notice Ms. Owen blush as she clasped her hands to her chest, smiled and sighed. “That was back when we could still get speakers of his stature … though last year’s chemist from Mount Vernon was an expert on asphalt’s liquidity—”

“Lame!” shouted a girl who had sidled up next to Phiale.

Ms. Owen frowned as she took in the new arrival with long blonde hair and a small, upturned nose. The girl’s sparkly-framed glasses made a mockery of the school uniform. “It seems we have a visitor. You must be new to the academy, because we teach our Owls better manners than that. What is your name?”

The girl spat and tried to screech hypersonically, but it just came out as a weak “eeeee.” She shook her head in frustration and said, “Just call me Belle for now.”

Ms. Owen shut her eyes for a moment and continued in the voice of a 19th-century schoolmarm — but with the confusing precision of a 20th-century slide rule: “As I was saying, imagine strands of DNA lying there in the dirt; their one job is to endure and replicate, but they can’t last long unprotected. So in the case of animals like us, we develop a body around ourselves and a mind to move about for food and to reproduce with the opposite sex.”

“Principal Rapp told us there’s no reason to bother with the last part — back when he canceled our mixers,” said Camellia, whose hand rested on Lily’s far shoulder. “The end is near, and all that.”

Ms. Owen pressed on: “Fifty years ago, Dr. Dawkins described another kind of replicator called a meme.”

“Like the lady yelling at the cat?” asked a Violet standing next to the teacher.

“I wouldn’t know about such nonsense … I mean a bit of culture — like when a song repeats over and over in your head to make you sing it aloud to spread to somebody else’s head — or like when Principal Rapp believes that a Bible verse is so relevant he can’t help but to recite it. It’s the same reason a cold virus makes you sneeze — they have to disperse to other people to survive and thrive.”

“That’s funny how it’s called a meme” — Belle said and winked, giving off faint sparks that caused Ms. Owen to rub her eyes. “I had a friend named Mneme.” The fairy facepalmed and grimaced. “No, I mean I learned about Mneme in school like a normal human.”

Phiale couldn’t explain it at the time, but she felt nervous for Belle and the Flower Club members in general.

“She’s the Boeotian muse of memory, you know,” she rambled on. “The gods hated actors screwing up their lines — especially about their exploits. So they’d have Mneme whisper the right words into a performer’s ear to cut down on mutations. She never forgot anything ever … not nearly as irritating as Echo, though.”

“I’m scared,” said the Violet, shrinking against Ms. Owen, who stared dumbfounded at Belle.

Phiale felt the closeness of the late April sky, the air heavy with moisture. She wished it would pour — so it did. Overcome with shock and power of what she’d done, Phiale fell to the ground.

Belle helped her stand as the rest of the group sprinted up a hill toward the school and led her back to the stream bank. Then she plucked a magnolia leaf, held it over her head, winked and fluttered back into her sprightly form. Phiale blinked at the tiny, iridescent blur of her gossamer wings, shielded from the pelting rain.

“Ah, that’s better — human bodies are so unwieldy!” Tinker Bell shouted over the hammering drops. “Thanks for the cloudburst, by the way. Sometimes I don’t know when to shut up — at least that’s what those Fairy Council tyrants say … I guess even the dimmest of wits can occasionally be right about something … like a stopped clock … where’d you go?”

Bent over the stream, Phiale was soaking wet and enjoying it, watching the water ripple past rocks and branches, swirling, drawing her in. Her mood had loosened. Maybe the universe isn’t so bad after all.

“What’s going on?” she asked the sprite, who was now darting over the creek and around her face like a dragonfly with boundary issues.

A plastic ring appeared around Tinker Bell’s waist — which started gyrating. “You know how sometimes groups of humans suddenly feel compelled to all start doing the same thing? Like grab a hoop and twirl it around their midsection?” She pulled off the ring and flicked it at Phiale’s forehead. “Well, this whole town’s like that — with everything — because it got cursed from the sheer stupidity of the people who used to live here.

“It also means residents are more open to possession by cults, ghosts and divine presences — from gods to well … minor deities in your case.”

“I made it rain, Tink.”

Read Chapter 3 of The Flame of Heraclitus. Catch up with the Prologue. (Originally published on X.)

An Existential Fairy Tale

The Flame of Heraclitus

Rob Robill

Chapter 1

“Heraclitus’ words blaze with truth — but only if seized intuitively, not logically.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks

As 60 thin streams fell from Phiale’s watering can into a bronze planter called The Flame of Heraclitus, the topmost soil lost its form and flowed into rivulets between pansies and peonies.

A glint of light flashed near a patch of swamp buttercups she’d just watered — and a large bug zig-zagged in front of her face, dripping wet and asking what the hell her problem was. Phiale dropped the can with a splash and stumbled back into eight-foot-tall hedges encircling the center of the labyrinth.

“Don’t worry, Phiale. I’m not evil,” said the insect. No … more like a fairy … laughing evilly.

“How do you know my n-n-name?”

“You’re an attendant nymph of Artemis. Anybody who’s anybody knows your name.”

“You’ve got me mixed up with somebody else,” blurted Phiale, a first-year student at the New Harmony Girls Academy. Dressed in a gray skirt and green V-neck sweater emblazoned with the school logo, she took a deep breath, picked up the can and started for a gap in the hedges. “Anyway, er … Tinker Bell, my name just happens to be Phiale. My dad is a professor of classics.”

“No, it was the Fates who named you — they get cute before big events … to amuse the gods … especially when they’ve been hanging around Bacchus. Wait! Don’t leave yet — I’ve got something to show you.” Then, more to herself than to the girl: “Maybe this time I’ll get exiled someplace less cornpone.”

Wondering what corn had to do with anything, Phiale suddenly stopped and turned around. (Something turned her around.)

“That’s better,” Tinker Bell said. She wrung out her blonde hair and spiraled up above the planter to take a look around. The wide bowl, which sat atop a pedestal, was originally an academy play prop before the Class of 1925 installed it as a senior project — all under the fairy’s influence (although Phiale didn’t know its story that far back yet). The fairy noticed her looking at it. “That thing used to have an ‘eternal’ flame instead of flowers … until the 1975 natural gas shortage. They tried a fountain with a water line after that but gave up because of a drought … settled for dirt. That’s usually the narrative arc around here: big ideas to … well … she grimaced at the muck-streaked pavers below.

“Now let’s begin our lesson. Listen up, and redeem yourself for dousing my nap.” The fairy flew to the hedge tops over Phiale’s head, snapped off a twig and took aim at the planter, ringed by stone benches and Ionic columns, already crumbling, no longer able to support a small roof.

Tinker Bell cleared her throat and … a car door shut.

Crouched in the hedges, Phiale heard voices approaching the labyrinth entrance. “I hope you brought some red thread,” a man said.

“No, but I can leave crumbs — I’ve got half a scone left over from the ‘Finding Utopia in Victimhood’ session,” a woman replied.

“I hear cult scum,” the fairy hissed as her dress changed from mossy green to fiery red.

The man’s voice grew louder and fainter as the pair progressed through the hedge convolutions: “We’re now on a journey to the center, a peaceful, inner space to contemplate our identities before we follow the path back into the world as stronger, more focused allies.”

“That’s so beautiful, the way you put that,” the woman cooed.

Tinker Bell vomited a sparkly stream of half-digested nemesis bloom nectar, wiped her mouth and said, “Class is in session …

“ALL IS FIRE!”

She jabbed with the twig and a 30-foot flame shot up from the planter, blasting Phiale with heat, potting soil and petals. The fire expanded into a dome over the labyrinth — ribbons appearing, spreading, racing into oblivion.

“Oh, my God!” the woman screamed. “The sky’s on fire!”

“Get down!” yelled her companion. “Crawl! Crawl! No, that’s the wrong way!”

“Up and down are one and the same!” Tinker Bell proclaimed. She raised the wand over her head, and as she slowly brought it down, the fire itself dropped a little and was replaced by a mist that shimmered in different colors, shifting with Phiale’s gaze like some kind of psychic Instagram filter. Then the cloud coalesced into water as it continued falling, retracing back to the center in a column above the planter. The girl shivered and felt a wave of relief with the transition in elements. And she had a wild thought: Did I somehow make the mist twinkle?

“Water is descending fire,” Tinker Bell said, “an illusion of form that makes it seem denser, less rarefied than it really is.” She dropped her arm and the water fell as earth back into the planter (mostly).

Phiale let out a long breath. Maybe I’m not going to die … I need to get out of here, though. But she felt like she couldn’t move, trapped in the center of a maze.

“Dirt is fire, but even less its true nature,” the fairy continued. “It has fallen, you see, into stability, rigidity, dogma — into cult … and then …

“EVERYTHING BURNS!”

She cackled and poked with the stick — another column of flame exploded upward and, dropping, turned to mist, water and then dirt.

Peeking between her fingers, Phiale heard distant sirens.

* * *

When the girl emerged from the labyrinth accompanied by an EMT who’d found her still in the shrubbery, she tried to hurry past a firefighter with a boot on the front bumper of a ladder truck and a clipboard on her thigh. She was questioning the man and woman, both openly weeping.

“Hey, Larry!” the firefighter called out to the chief eating a sandwich in the front seat. “This fellow says somebody screamed ‘fire’ before each of the explos—”

“Fellow?” interrupted the eyewitness.

The firefighter’s silver eyes met Phiale’s glance as the girl tried to sneak past. The tall, young woman pulled down her helmet’s chinstrap and spit a string of tobacco juice onto the pavement. “Howdy, miss,” she said.

Phiale gasped and looked away. As she picked up her pace, goosebumps spread over her body. Did I just see a goddess?

Check out Chapter 2 of The Flame of Heraclitus. Catch up with the Prologue. (Originally shared on X)