The Oracle

Marvin meekly meandered up the overgrown stone staircase. The wooden railing running up the center of the stairs, clearly intended for safety, now aged dangerously with splinters jutting out through cracks in worn red paint. The staircase was tall and long. The bushes and trees, who had worked steadily to reclaim the land of their ancestors, obscured all visitors’ view of exactly how high they must climb. But each made the journey just the same. This was the only route to the house of The Oracle.

Marvin was sweating. The stairs were tiring, but they were not the sole culprit. His family was sick and his life was spiraling. He needed guidance. Everyone around him could see that. His grandmother, the first to succumb to the illness, had always been his biggest supporter and confidant. Before she passed, she begged him. “Marvin, we do not have long. Go to the temple. Seek The Oracle. She will know what to do.”

“Gran, I will do anything to save you. Tell me what you need.” He held back a wave of tears stirred by her pained breaths.

“Cross the barren river, go left at the god-struck tree, and climb the stairs of Mount Gorgon… Make sure that… by the time you arrive… there is only moonlight.”

Marvin planned to leave the next morning, but by then it was too late for Gran. The shattering sadness of losing the one who loved him most hardened the promises made the night before. His last words to his grandmother would not be a lie. He packed his bag as instructed, and with what he thought was enough for two days’ travel, and set out. Just before their conversation ended, his grandmother had given him one last instruction. “Bring this tea as an offering… You will understand how important… it is… once you see.”

Marvin had never seen The Oracle. He was starting to believe he never would. The barren river and god-struck tree were straight forward, and he was almost certain these were the right stairs. But the higher he climbed the less they really resembled stairs at all. The grass overtook the edges. The damaged railing disappeared. Soon, there was nothing guiding him except a tunnel of trees and bushes that left him with little choice but to go forward or give up. Giving up had never been an option, so he pressed on. The moon and stars were concealed by leaves, but, every once in a while, a beam of light from the moon would break through and illuminate a random spot of dirt or stone.

His lantern flickered helplessly and, before Marvin had time to react, it was out. The flood of darkness stopped him dead in his tracks as he waited for his eyes to adjust. His ears, compensating for his vision’s failures, tried to gather some sense of where he was. Whether or not the danger he had begun to picture in the darkness was real. The wind tore through the trees and its whistle harmonized with a symphony of frogs and crickets. Then, he heard the chimes. He whipped around wildly searching for the source and, as he spun, a beam of light broadened and the path became clear. The temple was just ahead.

Waterfalls crashed over the sides of the building into the ponds filled with lily pads beside it. He wondered how he had not heard the water until now. No part of the temple was lit, but the reflections of the moon in the pools, and off its polished marble features, provided enough light once you adapted. To enter, a series of marble slabs formed a walkway through the central pond. Marvin began across carefully.

As he got closer, the darkness of the entrance became somehow less inviting. He could not see anything inside at all. The mouth of the temple seemed ready to swallow him whole. For the sake of his grandmother, Marvin let it. Once he was in the dark foyer, he could see a single source of light directly ahead. It was a straight path, as it had been since the bottom of the stairs. And Marvin did what he had done since he first started his morning, he kept moving forward. As the hallway widened, and he approached what he would soon know as the Hall of The Oracle, he heard a dry hoarse voice.

“Who calls upon The Oracle of Mount Gorgon?” The question ended just as Marvin entered. A glass dome above let all the moon and starlight flow directly into the chamber. The floor and walls were adorned with carvings of snakes climbing from floor to ceiling in all directions. In the center of the chamber, and slightly above him, an elevated platform supported a hunched, seated, little girl and a slender old man clad in white. “I ask again.” The old man raised his voice which echoed throughout the hall. “Who calls upon The Oracle.”

“I am Marvin. Marvin Thune. My family is very sick. I… I was told to come and ask The Oracle for help.” Marvin breather intentionally calming his nerves.

“What do you offer?”

“What do I?... Oh! The tea.” Marvin fished in his bag and retrieved the pouch of herbal tea given to him by him by Gran. “I offer this tea.” Marvin kneeled and held the tea pouch up in both hands. It felt like the sort of thing one did when offering gifts to an oracle.

“Well. Get up child. Bring it to me.” The old man was seemingly unimpressed with the kneeling.

Marvin approached the platform and handed the tea to the old man’s outstretched hand. They both backed away from one another as soon as the transaction was complete. Almost as soon as Marvin handed it to him, he heard a tea pot whistle.

“You really are just in time.” A smile rippled through the wrinkles etched all throughout the old man’s face. “She was starting to get thirsty.”

The old man put the tea in an ornate ceramic cup, and poured the water from the tea pot over it. He placed the cup on a small matching plate and situated it directly in front of the child. She had not moved since Marvin had arrived. Her head was hung low and shrouded by a hood. But the cup was positioned directly in her field of vision. She grabbed it and took a long, exaggerated, sip.

What happened next Marvin could hardly begin to describe. Her body contorted and her back bent back until she formed a “C.” She screamed and howled. The temple shook and it felt as if the moon itself was flickering. She writhed on the ground and cried out as her voice took on a quality wholly unlike her own. Then, all at once, she was quiet and still. She stood and lowered her hood revealing her dark black hair and sunken white eyes.

“Tell me child. What do you seek?”