Find Averno

 My gift is this: a portal. A magic ring, a portkey, an invisibility cloak, that door in the back of your wardrobe you always hoped for. Check again, little hunters. Is that snow? Is that a draft, or the breath of another world? 

My gift is this: suspension

Of disbelief, of doubt 

Suspension between worlds: Now you too hang in the balance. After a week (though, of course, it feels like more) of hunting, of pushing on the very fabric of the world simply to feel it beneath your fingertips, of looking with new eyes at the very sky above you, I give you this moment to hang in the balance. The ground is no longer beneath your feet. Look around. Or even better- close your eyes. Pull the blanket over your head. Listen.

My gift is this: a little drop of hope. You would never admit it of course, it feels childish to even think so but maybe- just maybe- there is more truth to this game than you might have previously thought possible. Charlie with the golden ticket, Lucy facing down the lion, and now you- and what you are about to hear. There is a before, and there is an after. From here on out, everything will be shifted a little to the left, impossible to put back because now- now you believe, just a little. 

My gift is this: reanimation. 

Until now, stories have been dead things in jars. Bones in a graveyard. Jewels in a glass case. Pretty to look at, sure, sometimes even priceless. But the pound in your chest, the flutter in your lungs, the tremble in your fingers: that is the feeling of a story coming to life. A story in which you- yes, you, specifically are a key player, should you choose to accept your role. You have brushed upon this feeling before- when you find a clue in the dead of night, something from Elsewhere and for a moment, you are unsure where you are, where here is and where there is and think that perhaps, this is all a story you will tell someday. Look around- this is how it feels to be in the belly of the beast. In a story, alive and breathing, making and unmaking, actively in the process. 

My gift to you is this: 

More pieces of the puzzle. Eight of them, to be precise. There is a much larger picture here, as there always is. Listen. Listen again. Put them on repeat, learn them inside out. Put yourself into this story. Inhabit it. It is there that you will find what you need to know. It is not called “Find Kennedy”. It is called “Find Averno”. 

My gift to you is this: this story is not over. 

My gift to you is this: when it is, you will not be the same.

My gift is this: your biggest clue yet. 

You are searching for energy. 

For a cheat code, for a pocket between the worlds, for how this is all possible. 

Of course, there are any number of perfectly reasonable explanations, many of which you have already found. But when have you really been a fan of reasonable? 

When have you looked for the simple answer? 

Today, I dare you. 

What kind of energy is strong enough to reach across thousands of years? When you think of a daffodil, whose name sits on your lips? 

What kind of energy can reach across thousands of miles? 

What kind of energy could, perhaps, even reach across worlds? 

Stories are magic in the alchemical sense, as in, they are transformative. You are not the person you were a week ago- in fact, I hardly recognize you. There’s a wildness in your eyes now, something that dares the world to come and play. There is a sharpness- you know how to take things apart, to reform them into a shape you recognize- or perhaps, one you don’t. You are a little emptier and a little freer, closer to a ghost and closer to a phoenix. One foot in this world and one in the next. 

And so, my little hunters, the clock is ticking. You have almost all you need now, but you will need to be brave: no monsters come your way, no, it is bigger than that. You will have to fight the years of weight of a world that has told you to be reasonable, to be grounded, to be tethered. If you want to understand what has happened here, you will have to look first at yourselves: 

What has changed, in the alchemy of your very bones? 

What have you, all of you, my army of unchained minds, done in this week? 

And, perhaps, if you were capable of that, what else are you capable of? 

You now have 24 hours: 

In that, you must answer 3 questions- this is a fairytale, after all. 

Where did Kennedy go? 

How did Kennedy get there?  

What have you really been looking for? 

You are tired. Your eyes swim from exhaustion, nothing makes sense, you think that you have seen everything there is to see, or perhaps that there is so much more to see and you will never find it all. 

You have fought so hard to make it all make sense. 

You have made the conspiracy boards, you have found the most tenuous of connections, you have stained your finders with red string and sacrificed sleep and family dinners and celebrations. 

You have been excellent, little hunters. Explorers of the wide world and the wider sky. 

In order to find Kennedy, you must know Kennedy. 

You must know what it is to be lonely, to ache for a sky you have never seen, yet you have always known. You must know the haunting that lives in your shadow, always at your heels as you walk towards the sun. You must know exhaustion, brutal, and aching and cold in your fingertips because you have no idea how every morning you are supposed to get up and keep fighting towards it. 

Today, your job is not as neat and tidy: 

There have been many days full of clues, adrenaline and hunting and “look what I found!” 

But today, today is exhaustion because today, I ask you to look in the one place you haven’t been asked to look yet. 

Inside your own mind. 

Today, I ask you to know Kennedy. To sit with them a moment. 

Tomorrow is a time to discuss the ideas of force, the force of ideas, energy and expansion and velocity and the alchemical principles of story. 

Tomorrow, we begin the last leg of our little journey. 

But tonight, I ask you to look a little closer at our protagonist. 

When you were a child, you often wished to be swept up in the midst of a fairytale. A wild and brambly thing, a story full of nettles that wrapped your ankles and reminded you of the weighty pain of carrying your life on your shoulders, or perhaps one untethered from gravity, one that slipped into your own personal narrative and, like a hot air balloon, simply carried you away. 

As you grew, you realized that perhaps, a fairytale could not fix things born broken: you were not a changeling from another world, you weren’t likely to stumble upon the rabbit hole, and, after checking the back of every closet for years, you gave up, contented yourself with the small magics of an everyday life, magnified by the kaleidoscope of an overactive imagination. 

This is not my story. I am simply here because any good tale needs a narrator. I am not a character, merely a disembodied  voice in your head. 

I have a few magic tricks up my sleeve: 

I may haunt you, and all day, as you wonder where Kennedy went and how they got there, you will be oddly aware that you too are in a story. 

I may read your mind, know that tonight, you may even come back to these words, alone in your bed, hunched over the bluelight glow of a screen. You will take them out, finally alone, and look at them: shiny treasures hidden in your pocket, a stolen snack from the kitchen, this special secret knowledge that you- yes you, with the furrow in your brow and the crick in your neck and your shoulders up around your ears- yes, you too are in the midst of a fairytale. 

There are so many small tragedies in the world- like the fact that you may never be able to put into words how this feels. The thud in your chest because It’s True it’s all true and the world may still be slightly magic, if you look in the right places, and yet it’s too hard to explain it to someone else because language is an imprecise tool for things such as magic, dreams, and people who go traipsing through space and time and worlds as if it’s a stroll in the garden. 

But, like any good narrator, I have three gifts to you: 

The first is a promise: You will always have this. This feeling, right now. This story you are in the middle of. It is yours now. 

The second is a key: % B 1A 3 17 6

The third is a thread: the kind for tying things together. That which you have done in the last few days- it seems impossible. The amount of energy exerted and thoughts created and worlds built and unmade- that is the stuff of fairytale. Consider carefully what makes it true, what makes it real, and what makes it possible. 

On Myth

We fold ourselves into myth. Sometimes it is to hide, sometimes it is to travel, sometimes it is simply to feel that we have a path, a scuffed dirt trail to follow.

But occasionally, myths reach out and grab you. Occasionally myths will track you down, hunt you and haunt you.

the world speeds up again. Remember- sometimes you must look closer, get a new perspective. Sometimes, you must look for answers in unexpected places- even the earth itself lends answers to the question- “when will the winter end?” Sometimes you must look in the places you already know of- you are not the first children lost in this wood, the first to lose a friend, the first to go looking for the answers. Look for a familiar face, or voice. And remember, little by little, you write this narrative. It is coming alive. It blooms beneath your very feet, little hunters. 

The game is afoot.