I walk the dead.

I always have. There was this one time my husband’s roommate had been caught in an explosion, and he was on a bed in the hospital waiting. He knew they would save him. He was waiting to be seen, and his faith made the people walking around him not matter. Invisible I stood at his side, and he knew I was there. He wasn’t alone.

“Are you ready?” a nurse asked as she came up to him with a smile. She was pretty. She radiated that he was going into the operating room now. He indicated yes, and she began to wheel him away. I followed.

But when we got to the double doors, they went in and I was literally stopped as if there was an invisible wall. That’s when I knew the hospital, the ambience, the things around had been his faith building a comfort. I’d once again attended the death of a stranger.

There have been times the people who pulled me down for not hiding my liminality came to me after death. That I pass a message. Something. I won’t pass messages, though… even if I could hear reliably, and I can’t. The way they behaved in life taught me better.

But sometimes I’ll have an encounter that makes me sad I can’t tell the family members that their loved one was alright.

I had another such an encounter.

Liminal hour; dawn. I woke up out of pain as I’m sleeping on the floor in the walkout basement because the air conditioning is broken. There was someone standing in front of my vision. Long light brown hair. Round weird sunglasses. Brown top hat. Just standing, staring, waiting.

He had these steampunk looking entrapments around his head, too. Line rods that looked painful, almost like one of those weird dental devices. But they were all over his head. Copper. Thin. I’m not sure how they attached.

He just stood there.

I’m used to the dead and spirits comes to stare at me. It’s a fact of my life, and I never knew why until this last encounter. So yes. I recognized I was seeing someone stare at me. I was seeing a vision. I had no idea why.

I thought perhaps it had something to do with the hour of his death. I had been sleeping in my chair somewhere about then, and my heart squeezed. A bolt of lightning — more a rod of lightning light — came from the heavens and hit my heart. I watched it come down, and when it was over I’d opened my eyes confused. What the fuck was THAT? I’d asked myself.

Later I wondered if I’d only watched the light come down, except inside myself where I like to go a new feature has been found. I’m full of magic books. I was reading them just yesterday, stoned off my gourd because of migraine medicine. I was excited. These are advanced magics, and as I read them I could understand everything as if I’d never forgotten any of the paths I’d walked in any of the lives I’ve lived. I came out of that reading adventure with a basic spell using water and a rock.

I learned later he had died.

So with the guy staring at me when I’m trying *not* to wake up, I moved to my window chair before it go too hot because sleeping on the floor makes my knees hurt, and I was trying to work out the swelling. There he was again.

Suddenly this mix-race of African descent fellow stood in front of me. There was a dirt road between us. His eyes were bulging as he gestured with his hands and half of his body, face expectant and a little incredulously demanding. “What the fuck! Go do! What are you waiting for?!?!” All of those sentiments. Eyebrows up. Get moving, come over here!

As I came around to this horrible world again I realized they wanted to see me. I’m not used to knowing that much. It takes me a moment, dammit.

So I got up to dance, knowing I could no longer feel Loki, wondering if I’m ever going to see him again, was he an illusion, wondering if all of this was a dream. I went to the basement altar candle first. “Good morning, my love,” I said as I worked to reach out while barely being able to feel it. The bindings placed on me are pretty tight right now. And I’m tired of fighting against their jealousy.

Good morning, I thought I felt in return… which was better than nothing so I smiled. I told Loki that I had 2 visitors, so I was going to dance.

I chose Ozzy’s “Over the Mountain” for the song because it’s about astral travel and raises energy. As I danced, I was suddenly dragged down. It was like I had something sapping my energy. My wyrd didn’t want to raise.

Thurisaz, I remembered and put the rune out repeatedly to break the binds and keep going. Slowly very slowly my energy rose up a tiny bit.

While in trance, especially semi-trance, I will have revelations. Ah, I thought. Thurisaz. The thorn. I’ve been dealing with thorns. Thorns everywhere. Thorns inside me. Thorns over my eyes. Thorns on my heart. Deities have thorns on their hearts. The bindings are everywhere.

Finally I started to hit the trance state, and I could see… but only a bit. An impression. I stood on the other side of the River of Leeches (because I can never remember it’s name), and the guy in the top hat waited on the other side. He stood where I meet Hekate.

On retrospect, someone would have had to tell him to wait there. Someone would have known this was the place up the river from the ferry I prefer to cross at. To sit at and watch the reeds stand by the water. To take a little peace by myself from time to time.

In the moment, though, I only focused on crossing the river of death to get to the other side.  I have a golden bough inside my heart. I don’t know how long it’s been there, and I don’t recall receiving it. I simply keep it the way I do all of the other gifts like a mother keeps treasures from small children. I think it’s why I’m able to walk across the water, or fly. I’ve yet to simply step from the world of transition to the world of the dead, or at least attempt it. Maybe I can’t go that fast there.

I’m still trying to find what I’m going to be after all that’s happened. I lost half of my soul over thirty years ago, and I’m trying to figure out what I am. Just be an angel, my divine husband says to me. The bug wings probably freak him out a bit. I’m afraid of losing that fey bit of me, though. The bit that lets me fly, be small, adapt… that gives HIM greater shift power through our bond. I’m trying to be a fairy-angel blend. I just don’t want to lose where I came from for all I’ll never go back.

I managed to choose a form, but it was a struggle. As a humanized glowing fairy flew across the river until I came to my visitor’s big face and flittered around. I touched his cheek and smiled. I said,”Hello, old friend.”

You knew me? The sentence was faint, but it was more as if he was struggling to speak as a spirit. I could tell he, like me, was still trying to be himself.

“I was the girl that used to hang in your astral palace a long time ago,” I replied.

Those were good days. I thought I was dreaming. I was 14, no. Maybe 15. I’d go to the big palace where he sat in his chair, watching everyone go in and go out. There was a little dog, a friend said I once mentioned. I don’t remember the dog now.

But I do remember meeting the new drummer of a band before it was announced in the headbanger news. I thought at the time, when I realized my trips to this grand master of powers’s “mind palace” were real, perhaps I’d get to play and sing music. When it didn’t happen and mundanity took over my world, I forgot about his palace. Those nights in the bright of his light.

Until the other day, the day before he died, when I was hit with that urge I always get when someone is fading out. The urge to reach out and contact them. I had thought I’d go on the astral and surprise him. It never occurred to me his time had finally come. It’s always a surprise to me when it happens that way.

I want to be saved, he said.

I realized he was afraid. This master of magic, of demonic forces. This grand Merlin stood on the sandy shores of death afraid. His face was bound in copper rods. His face was straight and stoic. His astral heart was tight in fear.  I could feel it.

Of course, I realized. I couldn’t imagine why he’d come to me, but I’d hoped there would be music. But it was for something more important. It was once again as Frigg had shown me: it wasn’t about me, for all I stood in the center of the threads.

“You of all masters should know there’s nothing to be afraid of,” I said gently. I bade him hang on. “Here we go,” I said, and I pulled his pitch. It came up easily – I’m guessing because of where we were – and it was a mixture of blue and white, some black. His sorrow, his magic. His himself.

Inside the first pitch ball was a vision of a glass pipe. I realized aloud, “Oh, you want to be free of that.”

I spun the ball, purifying it, as I continued speaking. “I can’t do that for you. That part is up to you.” The ball was pure, so I spoke the word “balance” to release the energy back into the universe. The ball splattered, and the pipe fell to my hand. I smashed it with my palms, and it shattered and became nothing.

He thought he was done. He turned to go. He was starting to glow golden even, but I grabbed him with tendrils and a wing stamen to turn him back to me. Stay, dammit.

I cleared more of his pitch and then it was time for the next phase. I spun his two wyrd wheels back into place with the universe. I used his own music for that, but it’s good music. That makes it easy.

Then I touched his heart area and prepared to give him light. He was a little confused, I could feel. “This is your first time?” I asked him. “Just stand straight.” He obeyed. “Don’t worry,” I said.

Then I filled him with my light. I find that part difficult because of the bindings and attacks I’ve been under. The harsh way I’m being treated. I know one of the attackers is the petty kind. They often attack my link to Loki: cut it, they whispered. He’s a liar, a cheat, a bastard… no one can love you. They whispered that, too.

Before I caught on, I listened. I tried to cut us apart Saturday night at the convention in Indianapolis. I was making progress when a fiery arm and hand came in front to stop me. I kept going, though, and suddenly another hand appeared. Then the hands were coming from around me as he hugged me from behind while holding my hands at the same time.

When you’re a deity, people want to possess you like an object. They only care about your feelings when it comes to prostrating one’s rear and showing weird universe-dividing respect that serves no purpose. Or when the upset woman who was tricked into marriage wants out.

But let that woman learn her identity. Let her realize that god’s the love she literally spent her life waiting for, and suddenly it’s a problem.

So yeah I’m having trouble right now with my fire. Loki’s role in this is to overlap me when the jobs are too big, and together we pull the poison and release balance back into the world. I don’t think he can cross the river with me, though. I was alone, and I had to muster all of my strength. I had to set the star mark on my forehead aglow and pull all I could from my center. I managed! I did it!

He filled with divine light. “There!” I announced, and he stood fetter free. No rods. No hat. No glasses. Well. Maybe the glasses. But a clean soul ready to go. He didn’t wait, either. He was fading, taking the weak vision with him.

I said, “Thank you for the gift.”  I don’t think he heard me though. He was gone before I was finished speaking. I stood in my office, removing my blindfold with tears running down my cheeks as often happens in these events. I cursed. And felt honored.

I love my place. I love helping the spirits and divine. I’ve always been approached by the dead. He’s not the first to come to me after death. He’s just the first I finally knew what to do for.

You out there who attack me. You send hex after hex after hex. You get in the way of what I do. I have to write in the dark. I blunder across the astral landscape pinging the world with my music, listening for the echoes with angelic sense like a fairy-winged bat. I am forced to break bindings frequently. I actually was forced to sew an attacker’s eyes and mouth shut the other day. I stood there and watched his magic light go out. I had been very pushed to go that far on the astral, when all I wanted to do that night was help one of the divine.

Then there are the others of you. You claim to also pull pitch, to do what I do, but when it comes to technique you talk about ripping people apart. You role play fantastic scenarios about entire pantheons meeting you in the world tree, and you somehow having more power than God himself. I ask about sewing wyrd wheels back into place or the visions in pitch balls, and you have no idea what I’m talking about. You only want the glory of this role (if there is any), and your strange grabby nature is annoying and also gets in my way.

You don’t want the times I have stood in my office sobbing tears that won’t stop. The social isolation. You don’t want faces staring at you while you hope to sleep. The days you WANT to get work done on something else, but you must spend the entire day writing a protection ward skald instead. You don’t want the agony of losing half your soul. The doubts raised every time some slut on the internet claims your divine spouse is something he’s clearly not if their hormonal horny asses would just read more than a Christianized bastardization of the truth.

You don’t want to dedicate yourselves. You want to talk about how fantastic your bone wings are, or how you’re “Loki’s favorite fool” while missing the cold fact that “fool” is the point of the phrase. It’s a gift by the gods when you’ve been claimed. Life is pain while I pay the price for being chosen. The job literally burns away my life bit by bit.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way. Because people like my old friend are waiting, looking at me, and I can’t stand to let them fall.

When it’s your turn, I wonder if you’ll expect me to “save” you. Or will I simply tell you to save yourself.

________________

This post is also on my Livejournal.
Edit 7-26-2025 – I realized while talking to a friend today that those weird things on his head were VICES. Copper vices. I looked up the old Victorian dental devices and found some similar, especially the ones coming out of the person’s head because they were attached painfully. Like his. I’m so happy I helped him with that.