The Tales of Tarya, Books 1-3

Chapter 7 - Initiation-2

‘Now is not the time to harvest a new character,’ he said.

Roberto shrugged and returned the box to the interior of the wagon. The players quickly formed a circle. Each held their own mask, even Mama Tina, Isabella, and Jal. Uberto passed Mina a mask and led her into the centre of the players’ circle as everyone else donned theirs. It was very late now, and the candles burned low within the coloured bowls of the lanterns, casting flickering red and blue light across the circle of grotesque leather faces. Overhead, the thin moon offered meagre borrowed light.

Facing the stern, masked faces, Mina felt frightened. None of them were recognisable as her friend. Was this a mistake? But her curiosity burned her. How could she turn from this? Aldo and Dario had tried to warn her, but they’d told her nothing that made her sense real danger. They could go to the Place of Dreams, and they could steal dreams. That was all she knew. When she’d broken from her body on her previous journeys to Tarya she’d felt exhilarated. She had also sensed power, just out of reach. If she were to be honest, that lured her now. If she took the oath, maybe she would be able to tap into the power that shimmered on the horizon like a promise.

As Uberto helped Mina don her mask, he whispered to her. ‘Are you sure you will take the oath, Mina? It is no shame to say no, but if you do, you can travel with us no more. If you speak the oath, you are bound by it for the rest of your days.’

It was late, and the air was chill. Mina felt her skin creeping.

‘I will take the oath,’ she said firmly. The familiar slipping sensation took her as the mask slipped into place, but this time she was ready for it, and she forced herself to be aware of her body, standing on the solid earth. The sensation eased quickly.

Uberto took a step back, facing her, and began. ‘Repeat my words. I swear on the breath of the Creator …’

Mina repeated his words:

That I will hold true to this Oath of the Players

That I will not give to the uninitiated the secrets of Tarya

That I will not touch the dreams of children

That I will give loyalty to the Players that give me haven

and that I will endeavour always to play

with the true spirit of the Players.

Uberto was silent, the oath complete. Mina remembered the warnings of her friends, and additional words came unbidden from her mouth

‘So long as I bring harm to no one.’

‘You can’t say that,’ Roberto protested. Despite the mask, his sharp voice was unmistakeable.

‘Why not?’ Dario asked. ‘Would you continue doing what we do if it harmed others?’

There was silence.

‘It is a fair addition,’ Uberto said finally. ‘We live by this oath. We do not wish to bring harm. And see, Mina, it is not so frightening an oath, is it?’

She shook her head.

‘You must hold it solemnly in your heart though,’ Uberto added. ‘To break it means exile from the players. And you must never, never speak of Tarya to anyone outside the players.’

‘You left part of it out!’ Jal said. ‘What about not venturing to the realms beyond the place of playing and players?’

Uberto looked down the long, long nose of his mask at the younger man. ‘In this case,’ he said slowly, ‘I think we must make an exception.’ Uberto held up his hand to stem further protests.

‘Now, I must speak of Tarya,’ he said firmly, beckoning the other players to sit. ‘You cannot go unprepared.’

‘But I’ve already …’

‘New players go as far as the Horizon, and when you found Isabella, you went there instinctively. But there are other realms, and I suspect your gift takes you to another part of Tarya entirely. The Horizon lies between our world and Tarya. It is a place of transition, the place where we transform. We harvest echoes, if you like, of dreams and dream people, from within Tarya and bring them into being here, in the real world, when we play. Once we find them they are held for us at the Horizon. Then when we put on the mask, we draw the dream or dream person to us.’

‘But where do the dreams come from?’ Mina asked, remembering Aldo’s last words to her.

‘From the night, from all of us. Do you remember your dreams, Mina?’

She shook her head.

‘That is because the dreams are set free, and drift through Tarya, collecting in the Place of Dreams, until they gradually melt away. If you remember your dream it has not been released properly, and stays in your memory, causing confusion. When you are caught between dreams and reality, life can become … difficult.’

Uberto’s eyes shifted sideways.

‘How do you know all this?’ she asked.

‘The knowledge of Tarya has been handed down through generations. My family has been part of the Gazini Players for three hundred years, since the earliest beginnings, when a traveller learned the secrets of Tarya and taught them to a few men who assisted him on the road.’

Roberto coughed, a fake, forced cough.

‘Quite right,’ Uberto said. ‘Poor players, to hear so much they have heard before. Mina, you reached the Horizon with considerable ease. Next you must learn to navigate Tarya itself, and to harvest in the Place of Dreams. You will see the dreams that have been set free. You can watch each dream person live a dream tale. When you find one that captivates you, simply take the threads you see attached to that dream person, and wrap your fingers around them. The thread is very fragile and will come apart in your hand.

‘But listen carefully, for there are two types of thread. Do not touch those that shine gold. If a player needs a new character, or to change a character, we work with the gold threads, but this is rare. Mostly we bring old characters to new situations. I doubt you will need to harvest the gold, since you tell a tale rather than taking on a character. And the gold must be harvested with proper ceremony, using the Key Mask, a special mask created for this purpose.’

Uberto looked around at the waiting players.

‘Tonight we must harvest dreams, for we need to rehearse new canovaccio before we reach Aurea. I will guide Mina. The rest of you come as far as you would with any initiate, then seek the dreams. Remember, Mina, do not touch the gold threads. Now, first you must reach the Horizon. Do as we have done before.’

Mina slowed her breathing and joined in the familiar chant. She let her mind empty, and tried to imagine she was telling a story. Around her, the other players were barely chanting, their lips moving silently. They transformed quickly, one by one, masks melting to become the features of unknown others. She watched Jal’s mask shift without settling into any particular set of features, and realised the other masks showed a similar fluidity. Her breathing quickened. They’d already entered the Horizon without her. If she couldn’t do this now, would her time with the players end?

Doubt seized her. It wasn’t working. She couldn’t find a character to aid her transformation. She was the narrator; not a person, but the spirit of story. That thought sparked an image in her head. She saw herself as a story teller, wrapped in her story teller’s cloak. In this image, she wove bright pictures with her hands, and her words. She was the story come to life. A strange sensation overtook her, as though she were lying on the ground, looking up at the dark sky, her head spinning.

Suddenly she felt very light, the spinning gone. Somehow she was standing still and moving swiftly. She realised she’d left her physical body. For a fleeting moment she saw a tiny portal, then it was a great archway through which she passed, and she was now floating above overlapping layers of brilliant stars in every possible colour. She realised they weren’t stars at all, but shapes, like the light outline of Isabella she’d seen in Clusone.

A subtle buzzing of hidden energy surrounded her. She looked down on distant mountains, and nearby trees, and people, many people, and each shape glimmered with light, layer upon layer of light, blurring outlines of real objects. There were intricate spiderwebs laid across the whole scene, gold threads wrapped around and over everything. Each thread was attached to one of the star outlines. Among the gold threads she glimpsed silver balls hovering here and there, their surfaces shifting and moving.

Then she was beyond this beautiful place of light, moving on. She began to move so quickly she could barely comprehend what she saw. Beyond the stars, the space was filled with pastel shadows of the real world, ragged at the edges, fading away to nothing. She thought she saw things strange and fantastical: people in grand outfits, great palaces far away, exotic animals, huge tables piled with wondrous feasts. Cobwebs overlaid this scene as well, but they were much fainter, and shimmered a silver so fragile it was almost white.

Mina began to see figures she recognised. Like the star people, they were more solid and real than the watercolour blurs of this new place, but too insubstantial for the real world. Within their starry edges she glimpsed familiar features, and realised she saw the other players. Then this place, too, was behind her.

With a great burst of movement she moved beyond the pastel realm, which she realised must be the Place of Dreams, and found herself immersed in a long band of incredibly bright light that extended beyond her, forward and back and upward. Moving upward, she broke out of the light and saw it from above, an endless, flowing river below her.

Now she stood on a great plain, though her body had long since been left behind, and the ground shifted with slow, heaving movements, rising up and sinking down in ponderous waves. Yet the deep blue waves had a weight and density to their movement that made Mina feel she could touch them and shape them. With that thought, she did.

~

It came easily to her, to shape this world. Images sprung into her thoughts, and she caused a wave of the great ocean to rise up, and up, thinning as it went, and taking on colour, until an arching, magnificent rainbow flew overhead. Another thought sent a flock of brilliantly coloured birds flying out of the shifting ocean and away. Then the song Lisette had sung was in her head, and she saw a girl standing there, a burning torch in her hand, her eyes mad. Mina waved her arm, not wanting to see what followed, and the image dissolved instantly.

She examined her arm with wonder. All she saw was an outline, clusters of glimmering stars, surrounded by a diffuse purple glow growing lighter the further it was from the outline. But within the stars there was nothing. Through the shape of her absent body she could actually see the ocean’s shifting mass below her.

An idea came to her then. She seemed to be able to create anything here, even people, with a mere thought. Before she could stop herself, Paolo stood there, just as she remembered him. Mina gasped. She hadn’t thought it could work. Surely there must be rules in this place. But there he was. She moved toward him, without understanding how she moved, but as she approached her brother, he dissolved. Mina reached for him with her starry arms, but at the same time she felt sure she wasn’t meant to be able to see or touch him here.