The womb they called it. That word that was just one letter away from being a tomb. Both were deep in the Mother. Life and Death, she held them both, and we were what was in between. We all knew that, the stories around the flames in both the times of frost and the time of summer’s sweating fire. Those of us still alive, who were born in the Winter of Wanting after the driest summer that had ever been and the autumn which had come with empty hands, had come of age. Some went in with another, if they were born on the same phase of the Moon. Others, like me, had to crawl alone. The blood of my birth flowed on the cusps of the waning Moon to the new. They told me I was a dark child, born with just a thin sliver of light.

When I saw my reflection in the obsidian mirror, I believed them. My eyes were as dark as that stone. Was my soul the same? I fretted that I had been torn from the womb with some evil. Maybe that was why I could not hear or speak. The others born in my season stayed away from me and said a demon kept my ears and mouth sealed with its spiny, coiling tail. I believed them. But this was not the time to think of that. This was a time to be reborn. Or find my peace. Find my death and lay down with those who had come before. We were told the remains of those who had come before waited for us there. Would I find life or a deadly scare?

But I had to bring my mind back. No thoughts of outside, just to let my brain pull my body along. I had to become the instinct of a worm. Crawling, crawling—-empty of rumination. What would I find when I came to the end of the tunnel. Would it be the womb of rebirth or a tomb to lie down in with the other scattered bones and skulls. I had to stop this thinking. I didn’t know exactly how—-no more thinking. No more thinking I screamed at myself in the deep dark of my skull. I was halfway there. I tried to keep my body high enough on my fingertips and toes. The stone was mostly worn and oily from all the bodies that had squeezed through before, but sometimes there was a jagged slice of rock jutting out. With my body stripped of all clothes, I did not want to scrape any flesh and begin to bleed. We no longer believed in such sacrifices.

I knew I was more than halfway there. The air had turned to a gelid steam. My body hot seemed to gather the water from the air. I dared not slip from the path, one false move who knows where I’d end up. I felt as my lungs shrunk with the diminishing size of the tunnel. My head throbbed, if I could have moved my hand to my chest, I would have felt if I still had a heartbeat there. My elbows ached from their lizard stride. My knees were just a solid pain, not having been bent for more than an hour. I was but a twinge of bone and meat. My last breath left in a sigh. Then, the tips of my fingers reached a full empty space. There was a twinkle. My eyes had found some small light. I pushed and I pulled as I gave birth to myself. The second time I had found my way. This time my mother wasn’t there, but the Great Mother herself.

I looked up expecting a canopy of long dripping stones. They were not there and the air was dry. I looked up, I was not blind. I felt my lungs pull in a sky full of air. There were stars upon stars and a sliver of Moon. I looked down and saw the bones of those who had come before. From their calcified scatter, a white wisp of forms began to rise. They were my folk—-they were ghosts but I wasn’t afraid. A woman and a man glided lightly over to where I stood. Their voices together echoed in that stone dale, “You have done well—-not only here but outside among the living…”

They both smiled and suddenly they grew in stature. Their bodies thinned and raised themselves to the sky. Each reached out with their hands and plucked a star from the dark. Then they fell back to their familiar luminescent bodies. There was a smile on their faces. “You are one of us,” they said without a move of their lips.

The next thing I knew, that plucked light pinched between their fingers was placed in my eyes. What was once dark obsidian, became glowing quartz. It didn’t hurt. Not even a sting. But there was a buzz within my head.

“You born on the last sliver of the Moon becoming new, you are the next Seer for our Folk.”

Without knowing what was happening I had been pushed back through that tunnel. It was an easy squeeze. There was no darkness left for me. Not there. Not in my eyes. Every fear was gone, except without tongue or ears how could I hear the others questions and have the ability to answer. I guess I would have to wait until I was reborn again out into the light of the day. With my eyes as bright as the sun, they’d all be surprised.