‘Confusions follow delusion’s end, the only thing that’s clear is the fog. Into the misery, into the mystery, tracks in the snow that falls. Do you remember when you didn’t know anything about anything and were free?’
   At the beach again, passing the eroding colonial fort of Panamá Viejo. The ruins of time and combat, testament to inhumanity. Insanity? Insanity is trying to stop it.
   Wait. How is it the threads are together again?
   A native Guna woman sews mola textiles, patching and reinventing from pieces of other cloths. I’m in Panama City with Dad.
   Out into the jungle, to the hamlet of El Piro. We visit a specific family for no obvious reason. Dad holds up a beautiful baby. There’s a unique tenderness when he looks at the young grandmother of this infant.
   She shows Dad an Indian Head patch. His old regiment, 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines. TeufelHunden, the Devil Dogs … Are these my cousins?
   We trek up a tall mountain further west.
   “Brent, come here. Check this out!” Dad presents a vista over the foggy valley, near the volcano. Volcán Barú. A cloudscape flows under us with misty whorls and waves. We appear to be on an island in an ocean of fog. “Doesn’t that curl in the fog look like the dog’s head?”
   ‘Fog dog cog bog. A part of the machine, gears turning a mean dream. The dogs of war, their gods are whores. The gods break the dogs like toys, there is no cure. And you fake like you had a choice, but whatever you choose, nothing changes.’

   Asleep in bed. His hand bandaged. Brent drones, “Nothing changes.”

   Long dormant Barú erupts, burning the countryside. From the magma, hounds of hell bring the fire of war. Fires burning homes and in the trees, fire, all I see, fire, burning, spreading like disease.

   Brent thrashes in sweaty sheets. He blurts, “It’s our death-game disease.”

   But that is past, the fire burned out. The smoke lingers, but there is peace now, and family. Innocents. Barú never erupted. These children are safe.
   The smoke thickens momentarily, then whiffs through quickly, and behind its veil, a different jungle. The land is poisoned. Ecuador. And there is Héctor. He is not safe. He cries brownish-black tears made of crude oil.
   I run from this horror, deeper into the jungle, into the mountains. Away from the land turned black by our greed. I step on good green earth, but the oil seeps through.
   Then the black turns to white. Speck by speck. The world’s coming apart again, but all white this time. Flake by flake? A huge dog approaches and raises its chin to the sky. It’s snow! The snow begins to fall furiously. Through the shroud of white I can see hints of green leaves, but no dog. No dog at all.
   I whistle to it and call out, “Where’d you go?”
   From the nothingness in white, there are paw prints. Then the snow twists into a larger dog shape, almost as tall as me. Grinning and fanged, it lunges at me, about to bite, but scatters as it hits, covering me in powder. A phantasmagoria made of snow, leaving me chilled.

   He wakes up in a cold sweat. Brent peers through his window at the night, strangely gray. ‘Fog?’ He looks at his bandaged hand, confused, and withdraws again to sleep.

​

   ‘Backtracking down the soul’s old corridors. She searches for a singular source. Sophos soft, roses rise. She is the lightning but fears the thunder. From a flashing white face to a very different place, wheels of life turn her under.’
   Back in the chemistry lab. It’s changed. White stone walls, white marble floors, hieroglyphs of the dog-headed Anubis alongside Greek motifs of Gaia and Hermes. A hallowed herb smokes from the ritual censers. Sumptuous. In a looking glass, I am myself, but I don’t see Allison. I am another, darker, North African person.
   Across the room, a prodigious furnace blows. I’m purifying something in a crucible within. I check the matter. It is blacker than obsidian. When mortification is complete, it will be time for separation and conjunction. I put the matter into a special liquid to filter out the dross.
   Someone knocks on my door. I open it. A servant is there, desperately pulling me to the window. I see many ships of war sailing upon my beloved city. Romans. Some forces have landed and are killing and looting already. They are headed for the library. Would they dare destroy our great library? Better the pyramids were never built than to lose all that knowledge, that wisdom of the ages.

   The white ghost face from the road. The blood from her mouth glosses her lips. She smiles and winks as the life fades from her eyes.

   In another lab. Different from the last but very much the same. Old stone, but a newer place. Beautifully elaborate Arabic tiles, some with prayers perhaps, around the athanor furnace. More glass equipment, though that is the only extravagance.
   I have refined my substance through the blackness of a cleansing fire, the blackness of blinding heat and light. The blackness of gestation that is the mother of all the cosmos. Then, with a rainbow sheen, it sheds its disparities to white. Once complete, I will have the power to transform lead into gold.
   Again, there is knocking at the door – a series with one rap, two quick, alternating one, two, one, two, one. It must be Khalil! I open the door. From beneath his low hood, he beseeches, “Aleeza! Yalla!” He gestures for me to come with him. “Asre’ee, Alee! Asre’ee!”
   I follow him up to the top of the old building, a keep within a small castle. It overlooks a square, hectic with people and horses. Beyond the walls, nearing the edge of the city, there is an army coming. The townspeople are screaming in Spanish and Arabic. Khalil wants me to leave with him, but I don’t want to abandon my lab, my Great Work.
   I gather what I can of my journals and occult books. I give them to a boy and tell him, “¡Llevalos a la biblioteca antigua! ¡Agarra a tu hermano y escondanse! ¡Marchense deprisa!”
   What did I say? I don’t speak Spanish!
   “¡Si, Aleeza!” He hurries off with the books.
   Next I am in the streets, running. Running for my life. Castilian soldiers chasing after.

   The beautiful white-light face is sad, crying. She reaches up and kisses me, then breathes her last.

   Now a different lab altogether. Grimy and cramped. Brick with no windows, a hearth built into the structure. Poorly vented, the heat is like a sauna. Still medieval. Crescents, ankhs and lotuses, but covert. Only the crosses proud on the walls. And with them, emblems that remind me of the zodiac, as well as more peculiar sigils.
   The equipment is very hodgepodge. I look to my notes. More Spanish. More Arabic. Wait! English! “The fifth step is the fermentation of your matter, which now should be wholly red. Proceed carefully, next applying heat for distillation of the element. Coagulation back into solid form will remain for the last. If done properly, thou wilt have found the Philosopher’s Stone!”
   A knock on the door becomes a fracas. Fighting and screams of pain and hate. Then hacking at the door – with axes! It’s the only way out! A group of guards charges in and holds me. Another man, face as cruel as the plague, follows. A witch-hunter!
   “You have committed the most grave heresy, my dear. This is diabolism! You’ll burn for this, but not before we get a confession.”
   “I confess! Kill me now!”
   “How could we? The only true confessions come from torture, you know that.”
   They tear down my lab, starting fires. In the flames, the glyphs on the wall change into tribal designs, legendary beasts and ancient sacred symbols. As they drag me away, the building is consumed, the more incendiary chemicals making a few loud explosions.
   And they torture, oh, how they torture me. Stripping my skin off, mutilating my genitals. Molten lead on my feet. “Turn that to gold!” one of them taunts. But some reserve, some part of the wild in me refuses to give them satisfaction. As they again press me to confess, I proclaim only that their villainy, their lust for pain and power, ensures they, not I, will suffer in the afterlife.
   They move me to the stake to be burned alive. When the first flames come up my leg, a red-violet light appears and dilates, surrounding me. As the fire blisters and chars my flesh, I feel nothing, yet my heart aches for this radiance embracing me.
   “Can’t you see it? Can’t you see the light?” They cannot.
   Within the radiance is a being. Not quite animal, not quite human – I can’t make it out clearly. It caresses me with a hand of light, far more brilliant than the flames of judgment. A hollow voice, like a whisper in a cave, advises, ‘Do you remember who you were? Who you’ve been? You are closer, in your bones, to the Philosopher’s Stone.’

 

   Down, down, down, falling down. Beaten and bloodied, but not ready to surrender.
   ‘Left after endeavor, the lunar eye to weather. If they believed the tallest tale, would they still find no avail? Untie the wisdom beneath the lies I feed them, the light in these dark phases of the soul.’
   Where am I? Who am I? … Kevin … right? Right.
   I rise up. Lying below is my body, crumpled on the soggy sand. Into the clouds I float … but I am still so close to the ground. Fog then. I keep moving upward. Through the receding mist I see the fields and forest, the lights of the town like an intricate constellation shining up from the earth. Our planet seems so very bright with potential. A canine howls in the distance.
   Am I flying?
   I’ve never flown in a dream. I come up through the high clouds. The stars above are the same but have different names. I hear the howl again, much closer. Sounds like a wolf or coyote is after me.
   I try to fly away, over the clouds. I see the animal now, chasing me. I vault up into the starry night, but it knows this game better and soon it catches me. It’s a coyote, though its shape has an ambiguous aura, not distinctly fixed. I fear its bite, but it takes me like a pup by the collar of my coat.
   Damn, Reggie took my new coat!
   The coat disappears and I drift away. With a disgruntled grunt, the coyote leaps after me. At this mesospheric height, the spinning in my head and stomach from the beating is too much, and I begin to free fall. The coyote snatches me up in its jaws once more, chomping my shirt, giving me a shake for good measure.
   As we rise again, the heat of the distant sun sears my pummeled face, but I’m protected by the creature’s cold breath on my nape. I try to glimpse the coyote, but can only see its paws paddling the ether.
   Someone else’s words are in my mind. ‘Two black eyes are nothing to me, and soon nothing but a memory to you. Your dark side, the far side of any preconception but truth. To know the continual climax of one life by all the little deaths.’
   What the hell does that mean?
   We’re far beyond our blue sphere, the moon is very near. My mind is filled with images.
   ‘Do you remember how we got here?’

   The fight! They are fools as they pillage the wild, but the White men are very clever with their machines and guns. They have no honor, killing even the women and children. And while they are not wise about harmony with life, they excel at dealing death. They are too many, too powerful for us. The blood on the trail follows us until we traverse the Mother River.
   Escaping the White wave, farther toward the setting sun, the tribe marches for weeks. We stop on a low hill above a shallow plain with a river and many creeks. Not the woodlands we are used to, but with a small forest for winter shelter and game, it will do. The earth is rich and the women make the corn grow tall.
   Other tribes live close to us, many forced to move by the White men. Where before we might have fought for wide hunting grounds, now we share the land. The Potawatomi, Odaawaa and even some Ho-Chunk pass through. Hopefully we can settle here, but there is talk we will have to move again.
   Our medicine keeper and healer, Âhpawêwa Mahkwa, has been gone many days, driven by a vision. We hear barking. Then comes our healer, fast after a dirty dog. It is unlike the wolves that run the land between here and our old home on the bountiful bay that the grandfathers talk about. It’s scrawny and sly, with big ears. Can it be related to the noble wolf?
   From horseback, Âhpawêwa Mahkwa throws spears and shoots arrows, but cannot hit the animal. It frolics about in loops, playing a game. Trying to catch the whirlwind dog, our healer pulls too hard on the horse and gets thrown.
   Now so mad, Âhpawêwa Mahkwa screams at the rascal, “You stole my dinner!” and having run out of arrows, throws anything at it, even the bow and some medicine pouches. The dog seems to laugh and scampers off. From indignation to genuine admiration, Âhpawêwa Mahkwa begins to chuckle, retrieving the pouches and bow and going to the medicine lodge.
   In the dark hours, the crazy dog returns, stealing some of our food. Again, no one can catch it. After many nights of this, Âhpawêwa Mahkwa determines that the animal is a friend to us and offers it meat. It takes the meat but runs away again.
   The next night, the crazy dog is up by the oak tree on the hill over our camp. It does not get any closer, but sits howling at the moon. Âhpawêwa Mahkwa comes from a lodge and listens, smiling. The following morning our healer tells us we will take a new totem for this animal, to empower us with its ingenuity and tenacity.
   After that, the two would visit sometimes at the small creek a ways off from our camp. When our healer has to travel, the sly dog returns to the creek each night, waiting.
   Âhpawêwa Mahkwa has come back, and tonight that crazy dog stole not dinner, but the medicine pouches! Then, as it neared the hill, from a cloudy but dry sky, lightning struck! Its tail was on fire and it ran so fast! It dropped the pouches and went spiraling in smoky circles over to the creek, extinguishing the flames. Âhpawêwa Mahkwa tended its burns, which weren’t too bad after all.
   Many seasons have passed and we are certain to move west again. Âhpawêwa Mahkwa and the crazy dog are quite old, but best of friends. One day they go together to rest by the creek and neither one returns. This night, the moon is full, mirrored in the waters. A howl echoes across the sky.
   ‘A long time ago ended the world we knew. Leaving a mirage through the tooth of a life without bite where we starve on half-truths. Conducted confusion, disruption revered, living only the after-dream of the ghosts of your fears.’

   The visions clear as we arrive on the moon. The coyote frees me from its grasp then lands like a skipping stone. It stops and turns to me in speculation.
   The lunar face is nothing like the one I’ve seen. Minimally revealed without shadows, there are way more craters. We’re on the dark side!
   At this, the coyote hangs its head and noses to a halo on the lunar horizon coming closer.
   “What?”
   Its mouth does not move but a halting eloquence is in my mind. ‘Your words are … strange to me. But this – it changes – it is not the dark side, it’s the far side.’
   “They’re not the same?”
   ‘Only when the moon is full.’
   The rays of the sun roll toward us as the moon turns with unnatural velocity. The light churns up silver-gray moon dust, throwing bones in the air. The bones compose exotic skeletons before falling again, under the soil.
   “I’m sorry, are you really a talking coyote?”
   The creature is bemused, ‘Are you really here?’
   “Yeah.” This elicits a full side-tilt stare from the canine. “Either I’m dreaming or I’m dead, but I’m here.”
   ‘You are dreaming … I am not.’
   The sunlight shines on me, creeping closer to the coyote. As the rays reach it, its guise glimmers, its shape shifts upright, and it dives into the vastness of space. Soon it’s a tiny spark, a dazzling seed in a far-off galaxy.

   Kevin comes to on the wet sand of the diamond. The rain has stopped and the air is cool. He’s sure he’s awake because of the pains all over his body. Everything is dull darkness except … a faint opalescence. It seems to be the tall streetlamp by the dugouts, but it’s so fuzzy.
   He gropes around and finds the lighter where Reggie dropped it. Holding it up as a torch, he sighs relief. He can see! A fog has settled in, enveloping the fields. Probably not smart to go into the woods.
   As he gets up, he’s slammed back to the sand by unmitigated nausea and he almost blacks out once more, but keeps it together.
   Standing again, he concentrates on the tall lamp and bumbles toward it. It’s centered between the backstops of three diamonds and a small concession booth. The adjacent parking lot points him to the street.
   Usually he could find his way anywhere in Fairfield, fog or no, but in his current state he’s insensible to any direction but down. If he can navigate the roads by the SportPark, he’ll make it to Marsha’s.
   He shivers in the cold. His clothes are saturated with water and blood. No – not to Marsha’s, not yet.