After the Ordeal

Sun is already high in the sky, ten o'clock sun. Today it is the last day after the ceremony for the ordeal procedure with Andrés (or is there nothing about it in the book and I am fantasizing like the kids?). We are walking down the road as perfect penitents, following the path to Horns Falls. Master Danilo joins us penitents in our walk to the sacred waterfall. The boys complained about the one-and-a-half mile walk there. I told them a motorized transportation means wouldn't suit the moment fine.

"In the desert in the dry, sun sits so high. Long day's mile and the radio crackles and the bones bleached white."

Bullroarers, written and performed by Midnight Oil.

I didn't have the idea of walking, it was Andrés'. He has the right to what can be his last walk on Earth. Because there is a reasonable chance that he won't survive. Because five minutes is a threshold time for the brain. It can begin to die as a whole or in parts after this period due to lack of ventilation. The thought fills me with anguish and I don't know why. Maybe because so much depends on this ordeal. My life included.

The path to Horns Falls is the one I know, no difference. The problem is how to get to the pool down there. It's not impossible, but very difficult to step on these stones. From way up here, the beuaty of the waterfall can be seen in its sheer majesty and the pool of dark and deep waters way below. Looking at the pool in more focus, there seems to be something moving in those waters. Shivers walk over my spine, but I put myself together. Maybe it was just a movement of the water itself.

Renan is the first to go down to the pool, followed by master Danilo, Guilherme, Anderson, Adriano and Bruno. I went down with Andrés, he helped me with the most difficult stones. I looked in the pool one more time and the impression there was something there got stronger.

Now all of us are in the cold waters of the pool. The ordeal is about to start. I asked Bruno for his wristwatch and had it in stopwatch mode. I reset the stopwatch and told everyone to hold Andrés. When the signal is given, all of us would push him into the water and hold him under water for exact five minutes. Suddenly, a movement in the waters ahead of us, not caused by the rapids or anything else of note. Master Danilo, Bruno and I perceived it.

"What was that, Ms. Grisam?", he looked tense and rattled. Renan said he had seen it too. All of us looked back where it happened, but there was nothing there anymore.

"I too saw something move in the water, but from here it is difficult to tell", said master Danilo, daunted.

We looked around the pool. Definitely a special place in the waterfall, a place the sun never reached at any time of the day, according to the boys. And we are inside of it. And it seems we are not the only ones.

"What can it be…?", started Renan, "is it that…"

"Shut your mouth, Renan", begged Guilherme, "daren't you say that name here…"

I totally agreed with Guilherme and asked them all to be quiet. Nothing else moved. All was silence, even too much of it: no sounds, no songbirds or other sounds of the forest around us. Only a dead silence, ominous, full of heavy promises of something imminent about to fall, electrically charged in the air of the place. All was calm, a weird calm, but it was.

After some time, we held Andrés again. The Ordeal was about to start. Bruno gave us the signal, I started the stopwatch and we submerged him in the water. We had begun the justice of Mithra. Silence among us was that of the environment around us: complete, closed. I gave my eyes a ride around the environment of the pool and my eyes met master Danilo's doing the same. Anderson noticed one more movement in the water and pointed at the spot with his nose. Adriano looked up to the sky as if he observed something. The darkness is taking control of all. The very air around us is going black. Andrés has been under water for one and a half minute now.

"Folks, look at the sky! Look at the sky!" uttered Adriano, his eyes as wide as saucers gazing at the sky.

It was nighttime, though it's hardly eleven in the morning. The stars shone bright in the sky and inside the pool no one and nothing could be seen anymore in that jet black darkness. You wouldn't see your hand if you were to put it right in front of your face. The water in the center of the pool starts to bubble strongly. Cold as hell, but as if it were boiling from the inside. Andrés has been under water for two minutes now. Astonishment and fear are all among us. As though the test was for every one of us, not only for Andrés.

"Are we gonna die?", asked Renan whispering, frankly frightened.

"But for sure, master Renan. Mind you, only the King Star knows our time. Now that things are getting real weird here is not a matter for doubt" murmured master Danilo back to Renan and us all.

In the center of the pool, the bubbling of the water grew stronger and stronger. Wind began to blow from inside the forest around the waterfall, following the course of the fall until it got to us down here in the pool, leaving everything colder than it already was. It's not nighttime now, something has simply covered the Sun. As a total eclipse of the Sun. But what is this eclipse TV hasn't even mentioned in the news? Andrés has been under water for two minutes and forty seconds now.

I looked into the pool, where the bubbling water could be heard. And, taking shape, the same thing I saw when Andrés swam in the same pool: the bull figure that looked at me, the face of some angry and frustrated god. I disguised my surprise not to startle the others, but all in vain, the kids' reaction as well as master Danilo's showed me I was not the only one to see it. Master Danilo now looked real worried.

""Sá" Stella, is this what I imagine it…"

"I had already seen that when Andrés swam here. He was inside the pool when it happened too."

Renan began to cry, now that the wind grew even stronger, a full-blown gale sweeping the forest in sheer fury, filling our eyes with dust. The other boys were as frightened as Renan. It was manifest that the ceremony at the Mithraeum was a piece of cake for them, compared to the Ordeal.

"Don't you cry, master Renan, this all will pass, you'll see."

"Yes, let's stay alert now. Something is testing us with Andrés. We have to keep steady and fearless. Something doesn't want us to complete…"

I couldn't go to the end of my phrase. We clearly heard the voice of Arthur in the dark from way up there, shouting amid the gale, telling us to stop because the test had been concluded.

"Arthur's back too! Holy shit!", shouted Adriano, petrified with horror.

The kids, terrified at the hearing of their late friend's voice and thinking like Adriano he was back to life, prepared to let go of Andrés when I told them it was a trap.

"True, that's a frigging trap, Arthur's dead, how could he be there shouting?" agreed Anderson.

"Didn't Andrés come back to life too?", argued Bruno amid the chaos of wind and water the forest and the waterfall had become. Andrés has been under water for three and a half minutes now. His body starts to shake violently in the water and he still has the long period of one and a half minute to go. The water in the pool starts to swell, as if the pool gained more and more depth. The last minute will be worst.

Four minutes. Something is grabbing me from my back. By the reactions around I see it is happening to everyone. This is the moment. Master Danilo and I shouted that everyone stayed together and not let themselves be pulled down by the force. Renan is growing more and more frightened and so is Adriano. The force is difficult to resist, but we'll have to try. We had never been so close to getting there. Four minutes and twenty seconds.

Voices fill the forest inside, saying labyrinthine things, maybe in an ancient language. Bizarre voices coming from above, from below, whispering in our ears while the water freezes more and more around us. When everything is already lost and Renan is almost giving in to the force that pulls him below, the stopwatch marks four minutes and fifty seconds. A pull from below, strong as hell, pulling us all under water in a whirlpool of confusion and terror. None of us is holding Andrés anymore. We all made it back to the surface, but Andrés had gone under the water to depths we cannot even imagine.

Five minutes when I stop the stopwatch. We are back to the edge of the pool, dog-tired, frightened to the bone. It is morning once again in Horns Falls. Whatever was obscuring the Sun is now gone. And it seems, took Andrés with it.

"For you don't know and you'll never ever know why. For you don't know how valuable five minutes can be in life."

Five Minutes, written and performed by Jorge Ben.

We remained at the edge of the pool some more, trying to regain forces so we could move away from Horns Falls. It was done. Working out or not, what we had to do was done. We were there remembering Andrés, his mannerisms, his irritation toward the chronic lack of order within the Society meetings. The boys said we'd better return. We were already high on the track when we heard something from inside the pool. We looked back and saw there was something moving there. It was Andrés.

From way up here we could see he was moving, but with extreme difficulty. We went down by running and took him out of the water. Eyes half open of one who got spat out of the depths of the pool. A kiss of life given by Adriano, reason for countless jokes from the others, inevitable even in the frame of mind we still were. In a nutshell, the whole of the Taurinos' Ancient Society's joking spirit at its finest. Gradually, Andrés begins to become aware of things around him. He threw up water like a fountain as we massaged him in the belly and chest.

"Why, that's a brave and strong boy over here. I recognize my old childhood friend in him once again."

Andrés smiled at master Danilo just hearing those things even without being able to. The others, except for Renan, were silent with astonishment. Andrés had to have something special after all. Renan talked non-stop, "the little fella is one of Those Who Have Returned. Wow, the guy rocks! He he has returned twice from where nobody else does. Now he's managed to make it out of the depths of the pool and come back to life again. Is there anything that he cannot do? Why can't I be him?"

Andrés still walked unsteadily on the sunny road as we left Horns Falls. Already far from the waterfall, we noticed the freshness of the air that had been dry as the driest desert so far. Master Danilo was the first of us to identify the humid breeze in the air.

"May he sleep in the depths of his darkness for 52 years more. When he returns here, we'll be ready for him. As we always have." declared Anderson.

"Amen", was the general chorus shortly before the general laughter. We were saved from the big disgrace and nobody needed to die. The concentrated face of Arthur studying the mystery book, the last memory I have from him alive, comes to my mind in this moment and fills me with infinite tenderness and a hope for the shape of things to come that I could not and would never try to explain. I just let the feeling come washing over me and live the ecstasy of those who still walk the Earth. The ecstasy of those who have found out that life can always go on. Always beyond.

Shake my tree | City in motion

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