The Big Book of Classic Fantasy

by The Big Book of Classic Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  “In the stir of fitting the camp for the night, and protecting the frail lodge against destruction, the two girl babies were unnoticed, and hand in hand they wandered with halting childish steps to the brink of the shore. Before them the waves arose and fell, frothed and whirled like some playful wild thing, and their little hands longed to grasp the curling eddies, the long lines of combers and breakers. Laughingly the babies slid down the fern-covered banks, and stepped into the shallow waters at the margin, then wandered out over the surface of the lake, frolicking and playing in the tossing waves and whirlpools, but neither little body sank. The small feet skimmed the angry waters like feathers dropped from the wings of some passing bird, for under those dancing innocent feet the Saghalie Tyee had placed the palms of his hands, and the soft baby soles rested and romped in an anchorage greater than the most sheltered harbor in all the vast Pacific coast.

  From the shores their mothers watched them, first in an agony of fear, then with wonder, then with reverence.

  “ ‘The great Tyee holds them in his hand,’ spoke one with whispered awe.

  “ ‘Listen, he speaks.’

  “ ‘Will you give these babies to rue, oh, mothers of the Squamish?’ said a voice from above the clouds. ‘To me to keep for you, always as babies, always as laughing, happy little ones, or will you take them back to yourselves and the shore, to have them grow away from their innocence, their childhood; to have them suffer in heart and body as women must ever suffer, to have them grow ill with age, old with pain and years, and then to die, to leave you lonely, and to go where you may not follow and care for them and love them? Which will you, oh, mothers of the Squamish? If you love yourselves best, you shall have your babies again. If you love your babies most, you will give them to me.’

  “And the two mothers answered as one voice: ‘Keep them always as babies, always innocent, always happy—take them, oh, Great Tyee, for we love them more than we love ourselves!’

  “The winds began to sob lower. The waves ceased swirling, the roar of tempestuous waters calmed to whispers, then lulled into perfect tranquility, but the babies still played and laughed on its blue surface. The hands of the Saghalie Tyee still upheld them.

  “That night the lake froze from shore to shore. When morning dawned, the two mothers were ‘wakened by a voice that spoke very gently, but it came from invisible lips, and they knew it to be a message from the Tyee of the Happy Hunting Grounds. ‘The babies are yours forever,’ he said, ‘although I, the Saghalie Tyee of all men, shall keep them in the hollow of my hands. I have bridged the waters with eternal stillness, for their little bodies are young and tender, their little feet too soft for rough waves, their little hands too frail to battle rough winds. No storm shall ever again fret this lake, no gale churn its surface to fury. I have tempered their little world to their baby needs, and they shall live in shelter for all time. Rise, oh, mothers of the Squamish, and look upon your gifts to me, which I shall keep in trust for you forever.’

  “The women arose, and creeping to the door of the lodge beheld their babies dancing on the frail, clear ice far out across the lake. They could see the baby smiles, hear the baby laughter, and they knew their mother-hearts would never mourn for their children’s lost innocence, or lost babyhood. And each year since that time, when the first frosts of late autumn touch the little lake with a film of ice, the babies come to play and laugh like elves of the air, upon its shining surface. They have never grown older, never grown less innocent. They are pure as the ice their soft, small feet touch with dancing step, and so they will remain for all time.”

  The silver sands were still filtering between her brown fingers as the Klootchman ended the tale, and I still lay watching the sunlight glint on the lazy Pacific, and wondering if it, too, were not the dancing feet of some long-ago children.

  “Do people ever see these ice babies now?” I asked dreamily.

  “Only those who are nearing the country of the Great Tyee,” she replied. “As one nears that land one becomes again as a little child, one’s eyes grow innocent, one’s heart trusting, one’s life blameless, as they go down the steep shores of age to the quiet, windless, waveless lake where they must rest forever in the hollows of the Great Tyee’s hands, for he has kept these pure Ice babies there for many hundreds of years because he wishes his Indian children to become like them before they cross the lake to the Happy Hunting Grounds on the far shore.”

  She was silent for a moment, then added: “I am growing old, Tillicum (friend), perhaps I shall see them—soon.”

  William Hope Hodgson (1877–1918) was an English author, photographer, sailor, and bodybuilder. Being a bodybuilder and also a personal trainer for a time may make him sui generis among weird fantasy writers. Although perhaps less known today, Hodgson’s fantasy, horror, and science fiction presaged much of the modern work done in these genres. His most popular works include The House on the Borderland (1908), The Night Land (1912), excerpted here, and the story suite Carnacki the Ghost-Finder (1913). Hodgson died at the age of forty while serving in World War I. The House on the Borderland, by departing from the traditional Gothic literature of the period, became an early twentieth-century example of radically fey fantasy. “The Last Redoubt” is a potent excerpt of the nameless narrator’s exploration of a classic science-fantasy land forever shrouded in darkness.

  The Last Redoubt

  (EXCERPT FROM THE NIGHT LAND)

  William Hope Hodgson

  SINCE MIRDATH, My Beautiful One, died and left me lonely in this world, I have suffered an anguish, and an utter and dreadful pain of longing, such as truly no words shall ever tell; for, in truth, I that had all the world through her sweet love and companionship, and knew all the joy and gladness of Life, have known such lonesome misery as doth stun me to think upon.

  Yet am I to my pen again; for of late a wondrous hope has grown in me, in that I have, at night in my sleep, waked into the future of this world, and seen strange things and utter marvels, and known once more the gladness of life; for I have learned the promise of the future, and have visited in my dreams those places where in the womb of Time, she and I shall come together, and part, and again come together—breaking asunder most drearly in pain, and again reuniting after strange ages, in a glad and mighty wonder.

  And this is the utter strange story of that which I have seen, and which, truly, I must set out, if the task be not too great; so that, in the setting out thereof, I may gain a little ease of the heart; and likewise, mayhap, give ease of hope to some other poor human, that doth suffer, even as I have suffered so dreadful with longing for Mine Own that is dead.

  And some shall read and say that this thing was not, and some shall dispute with them; but to them all I say naught, save “Read!” And having read that which I set down, then shall one and all have looked towards Eternity with me—unto its very portals. And so to my telling:

  To me, in this last time of my visions, of which I would tell, it was not as if I dreamed; but, as it were, that I waked there into the dark, in the future of this world. And the sun had died; and for me thus newly waked into that Future, to look back upon this, our Present Age, was to look back into dreams that my soul knew to be of reality; but which to those newly seeing eyes of mine, appeared but as a far vision, strangely hallowed with peacefulness and light.

  Always, it seemed to me when I awaked into the Future, into the Everlasting Night that lapped this world, that I saw near to me, and girdling me all about, a blurred greyness. And presently this, the greyness, would clear and fade from about me, even as a dusky cloud, and I would look out upon a world of darkness, lit here and there with strange sights. And with my waking into that Future, I waked not to ignorance; but to a full knowledge of those things which lit the Night Land; even as a man wakes from sleep each morning, and knows immediately he wakes, the names and knowledge of the Time which has bred him, and in which he l
ives. And the same while, a knowledge I had, as it were sub-conscious, of this Present—this early life, which now I live so utterly alone.

  In my earliest knowledge of that place, I was a youth, seventeen years grown, and my memory tells me that when first I waked, or came, as it might be said, to myself, in that Future, I stood in one of the embrasures of the Last Redoubt—that great Pyramid of grey metal which held the last millions of this world from the Powers of the Slayers.

  And so full am I of the knowledge of that Place, that scarce can I believe that none here know; and because I have such difficulty, it may be that I speak over familiarly of those things of which I know; and heed not to explain much that it is needful that I should explain to those who must read here, in this our present day. For there, as I stood and looked out, I was less the man of years of this age, than the youth of that, with the natural knowledge of that life which I had gathered by living all my seventeen years of life there; though, until that my first vision, I (of this Age) knew not of that other and Future Existence; yet woke to it so naturally as may a man wake here in his bed to the shining of the morning sun, and know it by name, and the meaning of aught else. And yet, as I stood there in the vast embrasure, I had also a knowledge, or memory, of this present life of ours, deep down within me; but touched with a halo of dreams, and yet with a conscious longing for One, known even there in a half memory as Mirdath.

  As I have said, in my earliest memory, I mind that I stood in an embrasure, high up in the side of the Pyramid, and looked outwards through a queer spy-glass to the North-West. Aye, full of youth and with an adventurous and yet half-fearful heart.

  And in my brain was, as I have told, the knowledge that had come to me in all the years of my life in the Redoubt; and yet until that moment, this Man of this Present Time had no knowledge of that future existence; and now I stood and had suddenly the knowledge of a life already spent in that strange land, and deeper within me the misty knowings of this our present Age, and, maybe, also of some others.

  To the North-West I looked through the queer spy-glass, and saw a landscape that I had looked upon and pored upon through all the years of that life, so that I knew how to name this thing and that thing, and give the very distances of each and every one from the “Centre-Point” of the Pyramid, which was that which had neither length nor breadth, and was made of polished metal in the Room of Mathematics, where I went daily to my studies.

  To the North-West I looked, and in the wide field of my glass, saw plain the bright glare of the fire from the Red Pit, shine upwards against the underside of the vast chin of the North-West Watcher—The Watching Thing of the North-West….“That which hath Watched from the Beginning, and until the opening of the Gateway of Eternity” came into my thoughts, as I looked through the glass…the words of Aesworpth, the Ancient Poet (though incredibly future to this our time). And suddenly they seemed at fault; for I looked deep down into my being, and saw, as dreams are seen, the sunlight and splendour of this our Present Age. And I was amazed.

  And here I must make it clear to all that, even as I waked from this Age, suddenly into that life, so must I—that youth there in the embrasure—have awakened then to the knowledge of this far-back life of ours—seeming to him a vision of the very beginnings of eternity, in the dawn of the world. Oh! I do but dread I make it not sufficient clear that I and he were both I—the same soul. He of that far date seeing vaguely the life that was (that I do now live in this present Age); and I of this time beholding the life that I yet shall live. How utterly strange!

  And yet, I do not know that I speak holy truth to say that I, in that future time, had no knowledge of this life and Age, before that awakening; for I woke to find that I was one who stood apart from the other youths, in that I had a dim knowledge—visionary, as it were, of the past, which confounded, whilst yet it angered, those who were the men of learning of that age; though of this matter, more anon. But this I do know, that from that time, onwards, my knowledge and assuredness of the Past was tenfold; for this my memory of that life told me.

  And so to further my telling. Yet before I pass onwards, one other thing is there of which I shall speak—In the moment in which I waked out of that youthfulness, into the assured awaredness of this our Age, in that moment the hunger of this my love flew to me across the ages; so that what had been but a memory-dream, grew to the pain of Reality, and I knew suddenly that I lacked; and from that time onwards, I went, listening, as even now my life is spent.

  And so it was that I (fresh-born in that future time) hungered strangely for My Beautiful One with all the strength of that new life, knowing that she had been mine, and might live again, even as I. And so, as I have said, I hungered, and found that I listened.

  And now, to go back from my digression, it was, as I have said, I had amazement at perceiving, in memory, the unknowable sunshine and splendour of this age breaking so clear through my hitherto most vague and hazy visions; so that the ignorance of Aesworpth was shouted to me by the things which now I knew.

  And from that time, onward, for a little space, I was stunned with all that I knew and guessed and felt; and all of a long while the hunger grew for that one I had lost in the early days—she who had sung to me in those faery days of light, that had been in verity. And the especial thoughts of that age looked back with a keen, regretful wonder into the gulf of forgetfulness.

  But, presently, I turned from the haze and pain of my dream-memories, once more to the inconceivable mystery of the Night Land, which I viewed through the great embrasure. For on none did it ever come with weariness to look out upon all the hideous mysteries; so that old and young watched, from early years to death, the black monstrosity of the Night Land, which this our last refuge of humanity held at bay.

  To the right of the Red Pit there lay a long, sinuous glare, which I knew as the Vale of Red Fire, and beyond that for many dreary miles the blackness of the Night Land; across which came the coldness of the light from the Plain of Blue Fire.

  And then, on the very borders of the Unknown Lands, there lay a range of low volcanoes, which lit up, far away in the outer darkness, the Black Hills, where shone the Seven Lights, which neither twinkled nor moved nor faltered through Eternity; and of which even the great spy-glass could make no understanding; nor had any adventurer from the Pyramid ever come back to tell us aught of them. And here let me say, that down in the Great Library of the Redoubt, were the histories of all those, with their discoveries, who had ventured out into the monstrousness of the Night Land, risking not the life only, but the spirit of life.

  And surely it is all so strange and wonderful to set out, that I could almost despair with the contemplation of that which I must achieve; for there is so much to tell, and so few words given to man by which he may make clear that which lies beyond the sight and the present and general knowings of Peoples.

  How shall you ever know, as I know in verity, of the greatness and reality and terror of the thing that I would tell plain to all; for we, with our puny span of recorded life must have great histories to tell, but the few bare details we know concerning years that are but a few thousands in all; and I must set out to you in the short pages of this my life there, a sufficiency of the life that had been, and the life that was, both within and without that mighty Pyramid, to make clear to those who may read, the truth of that which I would tell; and the histories of that great Redoubt dealt not with odd thousands of years; but with very millions; aye, away back into what they of that Age conceived to be the early days of the earth, when the sun, maybe, still gloomed dully in the night sky of the world. But of all that went before, nothing, save as myths, and matters to be taken most cautiously, and believed not by men of sanity and proved wisdom.

  And I…how shall I make all this clear to you who may read? The thing cannot be; and yet I must tell my history; for to be silent before so much wonder would be to suffer of too full a heart; and I must even ease my spirit by
this my struggle to tell to all how it was with me, and how it will be. Aye, even to the memories which were the possession of that far future youth, who was indeed I, of his childhood’s days, when his nurse of that Age swung him, and crooned impossible lullabies of this mythical sun which, according to those future fairy-tales, had once passed across the blackness that now lay above the Pyramid.

  Such is the monstrous futureness of this which I have seen through the body of that far-off youth.

  And so back to my telling. To my right, which was to the North, there stood, very far away, the House of Silence, upon a low hill. And in that House were many lights, and no sound. And so had it been through an uncountable Eternity of Years. Always those steady lights, and no whisper of sound—not even such as our distance-microphones could have discovered. And the danger of this House was accounted the greatest danger of all those Lands.

  And round by the House of Silence, wound the Road Where The Silent Ones Walk. And concerning this Road, which passed out of the Unknown Lands, nigh by the Place of the Ab-humans, where was always the green, luminous mist, nothing was known; save that it was held that, of all the works about the Mighty Pyramid, it was, alone, the one that was bred, long ages past, of healthy human toil and labour. And on this point alone, had a thousand books, and more, been writ; and all contrary, and so to no end, as is ever the way in such matters.