“Heraclitus’ words blaze with truth — but only if seized intuitively, not logically.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
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?
Part 1 of The Flame of Heraclitus is now lit on Kindle and in paperback. Check out Chapter 2, or catch up with the Prologue.
Rob Robill 