I stopped, stepping out of his world and looked down at the paper I had been scribbling on. Symbols, hieroglyphics of an age in which I was poorly suited, tried to convey their meanings, calling to me in their siren-trained voices, pulling with invisible strings, wanting me to serve them and project them upon others.
A voice behind me halted the mesmerizer’s world. The voice, a mix of noises that sounded like "the Earth-Sun relationship," plucked a chord in the mesmerizer’s tongue which resounded, "I’m paid to teach. I’ll give the answers." These sounds confused me, for last I knew, I had camped out on the ice and looked in wonder at the northern lights. Had the mesmerizer lost his way? Would we get back to safety?
His voice pinpointed our last location and we packed up our things, readying ourselves for the next disaster, a dissenting voice or blatant yawn, and headed for the door.
What lay beyond. He had not said. No voice or written symbol disclosed the secrets past that door. How would we know what to take with us to secure our passage, to guarantee an open path, to ensure our safe return? Who could we ask to help us?
We could not stay inside forever. Someone would have to go and get more food soon. Our supplies were limited. And what about the news of others? How would we keep in contact to know when they might need our help?
We were caught in a dilemma, our mesmerizer helpless to this task, unable to come up with messages of promise except to say he’d been there and back; we would not know until we "crossed that threshold," he tried to say, in vain, having lost the hold with which he got us here.
We looked about us, avoiding any eye contact that might betray the fear that we were lost. We saw the door. We memorized its golden shape, three feet wide and five feet high, a wooden hunk carved from trees that sheltered other creatures in the past, momentarily lost, tarrying beneath the swaying boughs, contemplating whether the sky would fall.
Inside or outside the door, our hope for security was thinning, for if the sky were to fall, we’d die no matter where we stood. But who had said the sky would fall? We could not tell. The floor was littered with walking sounds that jumped up and spoke into our ears, spreading stories and giving out lies like mudcake pies to children who thought they’d gotten pastries filled with sugar, honey, peaches and apples. The northern lights had not yet moved, held in place by the commanding voice of our mesmerizer. Why, then, would the sky fall? One walking sound had told us that, past the door, the mesmerizer lost his voice.
He had not flatly denied the charge, having forgotten to test his voice when he had "been there and back," out past the door. His stupidity would end us! How could he have forgotten? Wasn’t his voice needed outside the door as well as in here? He tried to calm us, telling us that others did the mesmerizing "out there." He had not spoken because he, like us, had been mesmerized and feared to speak lest the sky should fall.
He did not pacify our fear. He, too, feared the sky and had held us in his sway. If we thought he held the sky up and he did not...we were perplexed.
"Who hold the sky up?" one dared to speak out loud, the one who’d blurted out that unknown phrase, "the Earth-Sun relationship." Our eyes flashed wide in unison, like a field of poppies, spreading seed of doubt in the wind. Were we to let this blasphemous one remain among us to choke our lives with unwanted weeds and flowers? How long before others would give way to the questioning thoughts of this lost one and begin to doubt the right of our mesmerizer to hold up the sky?
Our mesmerizer spoke. "You must understand, the sky does not fall. It cannot fall."
"It cannot fall?" Had he gone made? We looked at each other, no longer afraid to show the fear within our eyes. Did he not know, we told each other, the very words he’d taught us, the symbols he’d shown us in the Books? What of the gods Galileo and Newton, Einstein and Copernicus? Had not they held up the sky with their messianic symbols; had not Freud and Adler and Laing explained to all of us how they, the gods, worked and that we were imperfect copies? Was our mesmerizer telling us that we are not copies but frauds?
Perhaps he’d made a mistake which we copies were prone to do. We must not forget those immortal words of a god long ago -- "To err is human, to forgive divine." We knew that mesmerizers were built like us but given the charge to hold up the sky and teach us to emulate the gods. They mesmerized us with their worlds, taking us to the land of the gods, a place and time where humans did not exist.
Our mesmerizer turned his attention from us to look at the device on his wrist, a gift from the gods that he along knew how to interpret.
"Well, class is up. I guess I’ll see you guys again tomorrow. Don’t forget to do your homework." He spoke the magic words and we walked confidently out the door.
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