FALLING
‘The Downfall’ by Charles Newington from
The Fool’s New Journey Tarot by John Matthews
He hung on the edge of the sky like a tear in the eye of a queen.
Then he fell, and the darkness enclosed him, wrapping him round in its sticky webs. Only the bright glow of his sword, held out before him like a torch, illumined his path. The path that was no path, the direction that was without direction, the goal that was unknown to him because he has not been given any chance to consider it.
Words had been expunged from his mind, so that he no longer possessed the language to formulate speech. Only a last brief glimpse of the Sword of Flame seared into his brain, and the sense of the Shaper's thoughts rang in his mind. 'You are no longer my Son. You have betrayed me. There is no place here for you!'
Then there was only the falling, the darkness, and a silence which was made worse because somewhere, like a distant echo, he heard singing - knew it was singing even though he had no words for it - and longed to join his own voice to that of the Others.
But he neither knew, nor could remember who those Others were, who the Shaper was, and why he could still see, like a last echoing cry, a flash of red wings. His own were white, shading to gold. He knew this even though he could see nothing in the darkness. Nor could he turn his head. His eyes seemed fixed, looking forward at the green glitter of his sword.
Gradually, so gradually that at first it was no more than a vague sensation in the deepest recesses of his mind, he became aware of a change in the texture of the darkness. In some way, though he groped for the concepts to fashion the thought, somehow the darkness was growing thicker. His descent began, imperceptibly at first, to slow.
And then ahead, giving for the first time dimension to his fall, he espied something else, something that was not himself nor his sword - a dim, distant break in the darkness, as though someone had thrust a pin through the vast velvet drape and let in some light - always supposing there was light, somewhere beyond the endless-seeming dark.
Slowly the dim glint took on shape and substance. A tiny whirling ball of light and shadow, intricately patterned with spirals of what, in some fashion, he knew to be earth and water.