The Mysteries of the...Onion-verse-Part 2

The next ‘day’ (since there was no setting and rising Sun, I had to go by the old coot’s reckoning--which knowing him, was rather variable, depending on his cranky moods), I was sitting under a mango tree, staring at the onion in my hands when Zulu came up to me.

“Ah yes, the onion lecture eh?”

“I don’t know if I would call it a lecture, he threw this thing at me when I asked a question and told me to go and study it.”

Zulu laughed, “That’s about as close to a lecture as you will get from Merlin. He’s not a real believer in imparting knowledge directly to others. He, and other Druids as well, believe that no lesson is truly learned until you experience it personally. So you will find his methods a little...unorthodox.”

“You mean like chaining my ass to a rock for a few weeks?”

“Yeah, that’s a fairly typical Merlin lesson.”

“OK then, let’s play his game again for the moment. I know onions are made of many layers, and I suppose he wants me to see that this somehow relates to the different worlds I asked him about, each layer perhps representing a world of some sort.”

“Yes, that’s a beginning. But a child could point that much out.”

“Oh really? What the Hell else is there to see about a damn onion?”

“There are as many lessons to be found in that onion as there are layers to peel back. It really is one of his most effective lessons.”

“I take it you have had this lesson as well?”

“Oh yes, that’s why I am so familiar with the feelings you are having about it right now, as well as with his method of teaching.”

“How long ago did you study under Merlin?”

Zulu looked around briefly, and took off his suit coat jacket and used it like a blanket to sit down on the mango-strewn ground without getting his trousers dirty. As usual, he was dressed as if he just emerged from Senate sub-committee meeting, wearing a very expensive looking three piece suit with a red power tie and stiffly starched shirt and sharp, expensive looking shoes shined to a high polish. Once he was settled, he reached his hand out for the onion.

I gave it to him, glad to have it out of my hands for the first time in over a day.

“I came here for the first time maybe 20 years ago. I didn’t last very long that time though. I was very quickly put off by his bizarre teaching methods and his seeming lack of patience. I had thought I was ready for him, and I had been warned before I came to see him that he was rather eccentric. But my ego was far too big at that time, I left him after being tossed the onion and left to my own devices for three days and nights.”

“So this lesson was the one that drove you away?”

“Indeed. You see, I came here very full of myself. Once I discovered that the this incredible talent for magick was what was causing me so much trouble with my own faith and in my life, I secretly set about finding the best teachers of magick that were available. Within a few years of hard study, I had come into my own as a more than passable Mage. I had mastered more than a few skills with the Elements, but had found my true talents lay in manipulating other peoples’ emotions and even their unconscious thoughts...”

“No wonder you’re a damn politician.”

He laughed at that. “Yes, it does suit me all too well, which is of course why I was hoodwinked into coming to see Merlin, much as I had to manipulate you into coming here. You see, other Mages didn’t like the fact that I was such a well known politician already and had just discovered how well my magickal talents could tie in to my all too public career. There was more than a little concern on their part that I would fall to temptation and try to grab for more political power than is wise for one of our kind.”

“So you were actually forced to come see Merlin?”

“Well, yes and no. I was approached by someone I rather trusted who offered to take me to see a teacher of great renown who would offer me lessons I couldn’t get anywhere else. I was trapped by my own thirst for knowledge. I agreed to come along, but this was the first time I had travelled outside our world as well, and like you, I was taken by a way that I had no way of replicating, so once I got here I was trapped for a time myself.”

“But didn’t you say that you left on your own during your first lesson? How did you do that if you didn’t know how to travel between worlds yet?”

“I have always been a remarkably quick student. Once I had discovered that such travel was possible, and once I was forced by Merlin to study that darn onion for three days and nights, I figured out how to open my own pathway between worlds, and decided in my own ill-advised haste that I had learned all he was going to teach me at that point.”

“So you went back home?”

Zulu threw his head back laughing at that notion. “Oh no. Just because I had figured out how to open up a portal between worlds didn’t mean that I actually knew what I was doing or how to get back home. No, I travelled mostly at random from one world to the next until I got myself good and lost. I actually ended up in a place that fit the closest descriptions of Hell that the Good Book described and found myself unable to leave. It was only some time later when I had given up all hope that I could ever get back home that the old fella toddled up to me in my rather unpleasant captivity and handed me another onion and asked if I was ready to resume our lessons. Needless to say, I readily agreed and returned with him back here to resume my studies.”

“You mean you actually found Hell?”

“Well, let’s just say it was a very warm place inhabited by some very scary creatures who weren’t of a very kind disposition and were more than happy to make me feel like I was in Hell, but no it was not the Biblical Hell as such, although I certainly think it could have been an inspiration for it.”

As he finished up his narrative, he looked at the onion again closely, sighed almost fondly and said, “You know, I have never looked at an onion the same way since.” He then tossed it back to me.

“I would guess not. But I still don’t see how there can be that many damn lessons to be learned from this thing.”

“Then you haven’t studied it long enough...”