Tillie

"You really want to try this?" the Master asked, unconvinced. Dregs of bitterness surfaced from the bottom of his thoughts and he pushed them back before they clouded the pristine waters of his gaze.

So many disciples, so many years, and not one of them had made it out of the Fog, not alive anyway. The Fog was ruthless and cold, the absolute judge and mirror of the soul. It found everyone wanting.

The Fog had taken a piece of him too when it called out to him, how long ago, it didn't even matter now. It took him, he didn't seek it, that's how the Fog was. It didn't like being summoned, challenged or besought: it reigned supreme.

"Yes, Master," the supplicant confirmed, with a light in his eyes that portended doom to his wise teacher.

It pained him to see that light be lost forever. Nobody had ever come out of the Fog with their soul unmarred. That was the price it imposed on the daring: it forced them to forgo their right to happiness and hope.

"And have you properly prepared yourself for this journey?" the teacher asked, serene, hiding all his reservations about this endeavor, which he thought misguided, inside the crystal fortress of his mind.

The Master had nothing to hide.

Like a structure made of glass his mind let the light shine through, revealing every detail, and gave the careless a false sense of transparency, but the thoughtful, those who examined it closer, found themselves disoriented in it, like in a hall of mirrors, where one couldn't distinguish the real things from their reflections, where the real and virtual worlds collapsed into each other, and any sense of direction got irretrievably confused.

The supplicant looked into his teacher's eyes and his mind wandered aimlessly into one of the halls of his crystal mind palace and got trapped in it, hopelessly lost. The Master sighed, his soul already mourning; there was no way this young chap would make it out of the Fog, no way at all. It was a painful exercise in futility, punishable by death: the cost of foolishness one had to accept.

"Do you have any advice, Master?"

'Don't go,' the teacher replied forcefully, but only in his thoughts, since it was strictly forbidden to influence another's choice, or impart knowledge one had to earn the hard way, the way of the Fog. He said out loud.

"No. It is my duty to remind you of the Law: whatever you see in the Fog is real, treat it as if it were real. Don't ponder, don't linger, don't doubt. Don't look back."

He had never understood the last tenet of the Law, and that had been his undoing, a cautionary tale he wished to share, but couldn't, which heightened its bitterness.

"Don't look back." That was his love talking, his miracle with dark eyes and lustrous black hair, so dark it cast blue shadows as light moved through it, heavy and sumptuous, like expensive silk.

‘She wasn't real,’ he thought. She had never been real, not here, in the light, after he made it out of the Fog. What was real was the only thing that mattered to him, worth any sacrifice, his ultimate value. Living in the Fog pained him like a wound of the mind. He despised existence in that make believe world where everything was palpable, but nothing was real.

The people, the places, the feelings, the circumstances, all illusory, like a mirror maze whose purpose eludes you, only to discover it never had one, other than to delay and deceive, after you get out.

It wasn't real, the smile with cherry lips and the rose and honey scent of her hair, her name, Matilda, which always made him laugh, because it belonged to a much older woman, a stocky great aunt with a stentorian voice.

Tillie, he called her, his beautiful illusion. Tillie, whose tears were round like pearls, were those tears real, he had wondered ever since, can one woman's existence be an illusion but her sorrow be real?

"Why would one doubt what one sees in the Fog, Master?" the supplicant looked into his eyes, oblivious to the pain bouncing back and forth between the clear glass walls of his memory palace.

'Hopeless,' the Master thought, contemplating alternative ways to stop him from attempting the quest.

How does one stop fools from walking into utter dissolution?

How does one delay inevitable loss and gratuitous tragedy without explaining it?

The foolish think themselves wise, but not the youth before him. He was much worse: he was an innocent. 'Like a child,' the Master thought. 'I'm sending a child into a battle I can already see he lost. How do you stop innocence from walking into the abyss with a smile on its face?'

The supplicant would forget, this one thing he was sure of, the first law of the Fog. Everyone did, as they stepped valiantly over the threshold, secure in the knowledge of the world outside, convinced their wisdom will keep them from the hurt, laughing at the make believe world they just entered, and thinking themselves above it.

"Please don't leave," his miracle cried, and he was angry with her, the deceitful woman who kept him trapped in the mire of illusion, she, who, like a Circe of old, wove the ropes of his confinement out of her honey fragrant hair.

That was her entire purpose to exist, he thought, to keep him trapped there with her. She was but one of the many versions of Maya, more beautiful than the rest but no less dangerous and annihilating, the sweet libation which covered the bitter taste of poison. It was the bitterness that lingered, the bitterness he could still taste right now.

"You call this life?" he had retorted, with biting words that left a hollow wound in her heart, and unbeknownst to him, left indelible scars on his psyche too, a void where something used to be, a feeling he could barely sense beneath the pain. "Is this what you want me to be? A fake character in a make believe world, fake and dull, just like you?"

His hurtful words bent her in half, like wilted grass, and he was in awe of how genuine her pain looked. They were so compelling, weren't they, the denizens of the Fog, so accomplished in the art of deceit!

All he had to do was remember the Law and find his way out, at any cost, ignoring all the ties that tried to drag him back. One moment of clarity, that's all he needed, one moment of clarity, and he would be free.

"Now, remember what I taught you. As a reward for conquering the Fog you are permitted to expand the Law. The one thing the Fog taught you, the one thing you hold true in the absolute, that is your contribution."

The supplicant gulped hard, mentally counting on his fingers to three. That's how many tenets the Law had; that's how many supplicants had made it back. The teacher nursed a glimmer of hope when he read the hesitation in the youngster's eye, a glimmer which turned into a hardened look upon accepting the reality of the latter' s defiance, made evident by his uplifted chin.

'Hopeless,' the Master thought.

" You understand that once back here, you can't return to the place you left, yes?"

'Who in his right mind would want to go back into the Fog?' the supplicant thought, but his deference to the Master held back the disrespectful comment, which was expressed only in his eyes.

"Whatever lesson you learn, it ends when you depart. Should you want to go back again, there will be a new lesson. There are no guarantees."

Of course he had hoped that was a lie, but his hope came too late, after centuries buried whatever was left of that illusory world he missed under thick layers of dust, and his ill-advised second immersion in the Fog, which almost claimed his life, attested to the harsh reality of the truth.

In the beginning he had hoped his Tillie was like him, and the sting of discovering otherwise burned him like a shameful disease, adding the mortifying embarrassment of falling for a cartoon character to the pain of his confinement. What was he thinking, attempting this challenge from which nobody he ever heard of came out alive? What was he thinking?

He hated all the animated figures of his prison, these oblivious almost humans, almost wise, almost likable, almost worth listening to, for being so lifelike they made him forget they were characters in an amusement park, but unlike real actors, they played their roles unaware, taking them seriously for life.

"Take me with you, then," his miracle had uttered between sobs, and he scoffed. Take her with him where, the beguiling illusion of the Fog? How did one turn smoke and mirrors into a real being, even if one wanted to?

He resented her for not being real and for burdening him with the hard choice of accepting her sacrifice, as if she could feel pain, as if that was an actual choice.

Maya was relentless in twisting the mind and spinning invisible spider webs which felt delicate and innocuous but made it impossible to break free.

"You can't leave here," he had tried to let her down gently, and, to his shame, told her a lie. He justified that with the rationalization it was not a lie for her, just a half-truth she could understand. "If you leave the Fog, you might die."

"You don't know that for sure," she had looked at him with hope, the same hope he'd seen in the eyes of all the supplicants since, who were real human beings, depending on your definition of what counts as real. Tillie's words echoed in all their memories, and still lingered in the glimmers of the Fog, haunting his soul.

Another snare to hold him back, he thought, another layer of guilt. He hated guilt, especially of the gratuitous variety. What did he have to feel guilty for?

"You understand the risks?" he asked the supplicant, who nodded, eager to get this over with before the Master rescinded his permission to cross over.

They all thought the Master held the keys to the kingdom of the Fog, no matter how many times the latter had explained to them he wasn't allowed, by Law, to interfere with their choices.

The teacher had the surreal revelation he himself must be trapped in an illusion somehow, one in which he couldn't prevent unnecessary tragedy from happening, again and again.

'Stay here, you fool!' he wanted to scream, but there was no 'here' either, just an endless waiting room where one bent one's mind out of shape to pass the time. No events, no surprises, nothing to hope for. 'Maybe it's for the best. Maybe I should pray he never returns.'

Whatever awaited his apprentice out there in the Fog, it at least provided the illusion of purpose. Is the illusion of purpose worse than the certainty there isn't one? The jury was still out on that one.

Every supplicant that went into the Fog wanted to find meaning, as if meaning was some Holy Grail one could bring back and display on the mantelpiece!

The silliness of the thought almost made him giggle, warmed up his introspective gaze and turned it outwards, toward reality, making him look younger and strangely vulnerable.

He had often wondered what had happened to all the supplicants who never came back, and wished his wisdom gave him rein to hope they spent their years in the Fog living normal lives, with the average joys and tribulations, but he knew too much for that hope to take root.

Sometimes the Fog led nowhere, literally nowhere, a concept one can't conceive of unless exposed to its reality.

And then there were all the stories he had gathered over the centuries, apocryphal stories of horrors impossible for the human mind to fathom.

"Take me with you," she insisted, and he refused to risk the life of an illusion, he refused to allow her to yoke him with the guilt of her dissolution, to get drunk with the potent narcotic of her tears, to get tangled in the fairytale of her glossy dark hair.

She was an imaginary taste of honey, as potent and sweet as it was unreal.

Tillie. Do illusions get names? It had been so long since anyone had called him by his, he could barely remember it. Everyone called him Master now, an honorary title he had paid for with his heart.

"Will I need anything for the trip?" the supplicant asked, just to break his teacher out of his reverie without looking like he was imposing. He already knew the answer, which he had memorized and rehearsed for years. One took nothing on the journey. The challenge was to survive off of one's wit, unprotected, with the mind, the heart and the palms open.

The teacher didn't answer. He'd just realized he didn't know the name of this hapless youngster. After so many tries, he had stopped asking. One didn't name beings not meant to survive. In fact, he didn't know for sure his latest disciple's lot wouldn't be a good one. Nothing in the Fog was guaranteed, not even tragedy. His features lightened up, and he turned towards the youngster.

"We already discussed this at length, didn't we?"

"Yes, Master."

Tillie. He wished he had taken something to remind him of her, a lock of hair, her fragrant sash, if for no other reason but to shatter the illusion, once and for all, that one could bring anything back from the Fog. The truth is, he didn't want to know if the sacrifice had been in vain. He didn't want the agony of her shiny black hair tormenting him for all eternity. He preferred not to know.

"Anything you want to ask me before you cross?" the teacher upheld the tradition of granting the supplicant one personal truth before they passed the point of no return.

The youngster was anxious about what awaited him, and a personal question sounded awkward, given the formal nature of his relationship with his teacher, so he scrambled the best he could, as not to sound rude, and grabbed a neutral question at random.

"Which one was your tenet?"

"The first one."

The supplicant barely refrained from shrugging, wondering if he should have reserved this last question for a worthier inquiry, and started walking towards the Fog, tentatively, like a man condemned.

What a ridiculous attitude towards a journey undertaken in full knowledge and of one's free will!

The Fog didn't look menacing to the Master, not anymore, not after so many years together; it looked more like an old enemy now, one he had met in battle time and time again and had learned to respect.

The Fog was, for all practical concerns, the only constant in his ever shifting reality.

He could glimpse through its sheer mist the vague contours of what looked like the other side, but he was wise enough now to know that too was an illusion, that what transpired as depth was, in fact, only on the surface, a painting on a veil, subtle enough to entice.

He wondered about Matilda, whether she had become that matronly lady worthy of the name, and whether that mental imagery was not a flight of his fancy, but a true vision of his future Tillie in unfolded time. There was no way of knowing, of course. There was no such thing as history, or contiguous reality, no trace of the illusion once it had run its course. Tillie lived only in his mind now, and, for the first time, maybe, she was real, as real as he, at least.

He watched the supplicant cross the threshold and sighed, torn between the sorrow and the hope of knowing he would never see him again. The only proof of the nameless youngster having been real was now confined to the teacher's memory.

"Don't ponder, don't linger, don't doubt."

Getting out of the Fog had been surprisingly easy, once the sacrifice was accepted and rendered, and he reveled in the glow of the accomplishment, crushed under the incredible honor of being allowed to amend the Law.

The truth hit him later, in wordless agony, not in the words he added to the sacred rule, which he crafted to perfection, as fitting for a tenet intended to outlast existence itself.

Tillie, his beautiful dream. Tillie, who was never real. His miracle, his bride, his endless agony.

In all these centuries, she never crossed the threshold of his peaceful gaze. She wasn't allowed past the edge of his mind and out into the world. He guarded his thoughts of her like a jealous lover, afraid someone might see her and take her from him, refuse him the guilty pleasure of her memory.

During his entire time in the Fog, the only proof he had the latter wasn't real was in the sacred teachings, which sounded less and less believable the more time went by. He was afraid, you see, that those teachings would be worn down to nothing, drowned in the scent of roses and honey, turned around by the surreal consistency of his illusion and forgotten, and once the memory of belonging 'outside' was gone, he wouldn't be able to hold on to what he knew to be the truth, and end up a character in a fake world, a broken, helpless toy.

Later he considered, but was too ashamed to admit it, even to himself, crossing over again, hoping to find Tillie, not the Tillie he knew, of course, another Tillie, the Fog was filled with them, but he couldn't bear the thought of staying there for her, and he couldn't bear the thought of leaving her again either. Besides, you can't replace a Tillie. Not if you want her to retain any intrinsic value.

"Whatever you see in the Fog is real. Treat it as if it were real."

He stopped to ponder on his tenet. Whatever one found in the Fog either was real, or one should treat it as real. He ought to have picked one sentence or the other, not both.

'I should have put more thought into this. The meaning is confused.'

Photo by Alexander Krivitskiy on Unsplash