The Fountain of Eden: A Myth of Birth, Death, and Beer Read online

  Chapter 18

  The Descent

  Team Myth walked up to the sipapuni, hidden deep within the sprawling natural wonder of Tranquil Forest. The morning rain had let up, and the sun now peeked through the clouds, portending another hot and humid August day.

  But this mattered not to Team Myth, for they would soon be out of this World. They stopped and stared at the effervescent spring, the entrance to the World Path.

  “So what do we do?” asked Jack, eying the fizzling waterhole with skepticism. “Jump in and go for a swim?”

  Stephone laughed. “Actually, you can walk on top of the water if you want to.”

  “But how does it all work? How do we travel this World Path?”

  “The sipapuni is filled with the Water of Life, which when imbibed makes humans immortal. This ambrosia runs through your veins. As a mytho, you're made of this Water. Just concentrate, and merge with the Water. Imagine yourself and the Water as one, for you are one.”

  “It's real easy,” encouraged Tom.

  “Haven't you done this before, Mister Whiskey?” asked Becky.

  Jack had traveled the World Path, but it had been awhile, and the memory had faded. “I . . . think so. Being a Trickster, I always liked it here on Earth, so I hardly ever used it.”

  “Well, you jist walk out on that there Water, concentrate real hard, and it'll take you to whatever World you wanna go to,” said Becky. “You just gotta wish yourself there. Honestly, there ain't nothing to it if you're mythical by nature.”

  Tom nudged Jack in the ribs. “She's right, Mister Whiskey. You just gotta b'lieve.”

  “Okay,” said Jack, and nudged back. “You do it first, though.”

  Tom Sawyer took a few steps backwards. He got set, ran, and leaped onto the Water in a dive, hands-first. He bounced off liquid as if it were solid ground, and busted out a hand spring and a flip before landing expertly on his feet atop the pool and bowing to the crowd.

  “You see?” said Tom, Riverdancing atop the Water. “Ain't nothing to it!”

  Stephone and Becky walked out onto the pool to join Tom. Jack thought it was rather surreal, seeing three people standing atop a gurgling spring, but it was really no more wonky than anything else he had recently witnessed within Eden city limits.

  “Come on, Jack,” said Stephone, beckoning.

  “But it's water. And not with a capital W.” Jack took a deep breath. “Sorry, but I'm still not fully readjusted to the fact that I'm a mytho. Humanity hangover, I guess.”

  “You can do this, Jack,” said Stephone.

  Standing two footsteps from the edge of the bubbling spring, Jack sighed. He closed his eyes, did his best to imagine liquid as solid, and took a step forward.

  Another.

  And another.

  Another, and thought: I'm doing it! I'm walking on water! Damn, I really am one mythic SOB, ain't I?

  He opened his eyes and looked down—and dropped feet first into the Water. He soon resurfaced, sputtering and spitting. Tom, Stephone, and Becky hauled him out of the pool by the arms. With help he managed to plant his sopping shoes atop the suddenly manically bubbling Water, which he got the impression was also laughing at him. “I guess everybody's a Trickster, huh?” muttered Jack.

  “Let's help Jack out, guys,” said a still-giggling Stephone to a red-faced Tom and a teary-eyed Becky. She turned to a sopping, despondent-looking Jack with a confident smile on her face. “You're thinking too hard about it. You are the Water, so be the Water.”

  Standing atop the Fountain of Eden, Team Myth stood in a circle and gripped hands—and melted into the Waters of the sipapuni.

  Jack's last thought before immersion was that the whole deal sounded suspiciously like Master Mirbodi and the whole “be kung-fu” thing.

  He fell into an unseen, underlying universe where reality merged with imagination.

  Brave new worlds, flights of fancy, unheard-of concepts swam by.

  He paddled through memories, dreams, visions.

  Underlying particles, threads, arcs.

  Space and stars and Void.

  Suns, constellations, cosmic waves.

  He was earth, air, fire—Water.

  He was sacred and profane, good and evil, infinite and absolute, spirit and matter, form and emptiness, heaven and earth, human and divine, order and chaos.

  He was thought, wisdom, imagination—Mind.

  He expanded and withdrew, formed and imploded, appeared from nothing and merged with everything before returning to nothing once more.

  He was born and died an instant death, every moment of every day.

  He managed to maintain a wispy form of consciousness within which he held onto a shred of memory. And what-had-once-been-Jack Whiskey held on for dear sweet mythical life as he was pulled screaming at the top of what-had-once-been-his-lungs through the Sea of Story, the Ocean of Myth, the Pool of Imagination, the Melting Pot of Mind.