Heretics book 3 - The Apocryphile Press

240 :: JOHN R. MABRY
he lit the sage and began a Lakota chant. He was, in fact,
1/16 Lakota, not enough to see in his stocky Melungeon features,
but enough to claim headrights, he knew, should he
ever choose to do so.
Fragrant smoke curled up from the sage, and gradually
charged the room with Beauty. Using a feather, Dylan blessed
himself with the smoke, then the skinny, prone frame of
Mikael, and finally, Brian, who sat erect on a stool, cradling
a Native American drum. Laying the unburned sage in an
oil-glittery abalone shell half, Dylan also laid aside the feather
and stretched out on the twin bed next to Mikael.
Dylan nudged him over a little, and eventually got comfortable.
Lying face up, his hands at his sides, he winked at
Brian. “Let’s get going.”
“How long?” Brian asked.
“You’re gonna hate me....”
“How long?” Brian scowled.
“Gimme an hour and a half under and a half an hour
return.”
“Oh...my hands are going to so hurt.”
“Ah told you you wuz gonna hate me.”
“Just get going,” Brian said, with mock irritation.
“If Ah can surface early, Ah will.”
“Deal.”
Brian began to pound on the drum with clean, slow, even
beats. Dylan allowed the concern about Toby to be there, but
chose not to focus on it. Instead, he concentrated on the
rhythm, and in his mind’s eye, he traveled down a wooded
path, deeper and deeper into an alternative reality that is the
Middle World.
Soon, the imaginal realm had solidified, and he began to
experience it not as a phenomenon of consciousness, not as
a world viewed through his mind’s eye, but as a world as
solid and real as any in waking life.