by Peter Harris
10
The Anklebiter
When he arrived, he saw that the thorn walls had grown even higher, and the gatekeepers even more hostile. They refused him an audience with Rosa, saying, ‘Why have you returned? Did we not beat you severely enough? The Earth woman has taken vows of silence; she does not need you, being in love with the Void, which gives her peace - something you can never have or give, as long as you cling to this life and wantonly seek to propagate it.’ And they began to train their probing minds upon him to break him.
Calibur, seeing their third eyes beginning to open, ran and hid himself in the deepest thickets that lay about the pond where the shepherd had bathed him. They did not follow him; he was but a stray dog to them; their time had not yet come for the great missions that were later to bring all Aeden under their sway. For the Guardians still held the Tor Enyása where the Tree of Life was, and the Aghmaath’s power to extend their dominion was limited by the Guardians and the Tree of Life. For in those days the Tree of Life still had its Jewel.
That night he camped by the pond, and admired its beauty as he had the first time when the sunset colours shone from its calm surface and made his heart glad though he was wounded from his whipping by the Aghmaath. Soon the many-coloured stars of Aeden rose, and his hope grew that he would indeed reach Rosa and win her back with the beauty of the icon.
And as he meditated on all the wonders of the World, one that he had never seen before appeared before his eyes: Elenázura, the Blue Moon of Aeden, sailing over the trees, reflecting in the still waters of the pond. And about its banks all the padmaësta flowers opened and turned to adore her, their pearly white petals tinged blue in the moonlight.
A strange bird began to call. It was the estamon, which means ‘love’s hope’ in the tongue of Aeden. Some also call it the moonbird, for it sings only on the nights of the Blue Moon. Now its mate replied in exquisite song, and other pairs joined in, until the whole land seemed full of singing moonbirds, like a dawn chorus of the night.
Then he remembered that the Blue Moon was the sign of the date he had dreaded all during his stay with the icon-makers: the beginning of the festival of the Void. And on the third day of the festival, devotees would give themselves to the dark fire of the Void. His heart almost stopped beating, and he felt sick even in the midst of his rapture. But the moonbirds kept singing, and somehow he could not believe she would kill herself, when the beauty and love of the Goddess was all around, streaming through the moonlight into everything.
‘The Goddess is surely with me — and her!’ he sighed, and tears rolled down his cheeks. He lay down in perfect peace and slept.
But the next morning, the first day of the festival of the Void, it was hot, and the sombre thoughts of the convent and its fearsome guards bore down on him, and soon Calibur was almost in despair again, even in the beauty of that place, which had revived and delighted him only the night before in the blue moonlight. Now he hardly noticed it or felt any joy in its beauty. Instead, the memory of his confrontation with the guards lingered and grew in his mind, and he feared their cruel lashes, and kept remembering what Rosa had said, that she had peace now that she had understood the futility of life and the blessedness of renunciation and oblivion. He lay back and let the thought grow within him: Oblivion. It felt better to be going with the flow of the river of degeneration instead of vainly struggling against its all-powerful current. Rosa was probably already there. He would go to be with her…
Suddenly he became aware of a growling in the thorns on the other side of the pond. He crept around the water’s edge to investigate. It was not a large animal, he could tell. But the wilds of Aeden were still strange to him; it could be anything. He looked into a little dell off the banks of the pond, and there, caught in a thorny trap, was an anklebiter. He had heard of these creatures from Estanam, and seen pictures of them at Baz Apédnapath, so he knew what to expect. ‘Keep your boots on, because they will bite at your ankles — hence the name,’ the shepherd had said. He approached carefully, and the growling increased, and the little badger-like creature prepared to defend itself to the death. But Calibur wrapped his hand in a cloth and freed it, whereupon it bit his boot, and scurried off, limping. ‘Predictable little creatures!’ Calibur laughed out loud, and suddenly felt better. He drank from the pond, and sat down to ponder what he should do next.
But the gloomy mood began to descend on him again, as he tried and failed to think of a plan to reach Rosa. And night fell.
The next morning, being the second day of the festival of the Void, as Calibur tried to decide which of his desperate plans to try, the anklebiter returned. It came in little scurries, sheltering behind tree-trunks, until it was behind a tree very near to where Calibur sat. Then it crept out and laid a small blue crystal at his feet. ‘This is exactly what Estanam said they do!’ he laughed, and he picked up the crystal. He knew what to do next: he laid the gift back at his feet, and the anklebiter came and took it back. Then it deposited it at his feet again. This was repeated, until finally Calibur knew it was safe to keep the gift, and he put it in his pocket, thanking the little creature aloud. He named it Chiseller, for its sharp front teeth, which had scored the leather of his boot.
And the anklebiter followed him as he crept towards the thorn wall, trying to find a gap through which to wriggle. But when he went to touch the thorns, they whipped about, and would have caught him but for Chiseller’s shrill warning cry. The Aghmaath came running, and Calibur narrowly escaped by flinging himself into the ditch alongside Chiseller, who covered himself with weeds and lay as dead.
That night Chiseller slept curled up at his feet in the thorny hollow where Calibur had hidden, outside the thorn wall of the convent, so near to Rosa and yet so far away. He heard the mournful gong calling the women to prayers, and their chanting of hymns to the Void late into the night. And when he finally nodded off his dreams were dark, full of thorny obstacles, until he knew he was lost in a labyrinth of thorns, and the Aghmaath were hunting him, and Rosa was calling to him, ‘Give yourself up! They are your friends!’ Then she turned into one of the thorn men herself, dressed in a pale ragged nightgown, wearing a crown of thorns from which her blood dripped over the veil she wore. She came up to him, and dread filled him as she lifted the veil. Looking into her face, he saw a death’s head, and an icy darkness through the sockets of her eyes. He felt for his sword, and swiping at her, found that he had cut open her belly even to the womb, and a child fell out crying. The Aghmaath pounced and carried it off. He tried to scream, but now Rosa moved closer, and began to kiss him, and he knew it was the smothering kiss of Death.
He woke to find the anklebiter licking at his face and nudging him frantically. Looking about the glade where the pond gleamed in the starlight, as if in a continuation of his nightmare Calibur saw the gliding forms of two Aghmaath. Trembling, he slid back into the shadows, and crawled blindly after Chiseller through the undergrowth of clinging ferns and long grasses. Suddenly the anklebiter stopped. Looking up, Calibur saw that the thorns were spread overhead so thickly as to block out all but a few of the stars. But ahead there was a low sandstone bank, with thorn-roots scrambling over it, the mass of rootlets forming a curtain over a dark overhang from which fear and horror seemed to flow like an icy vapour. The anklebiter scurried into the blackness, then re-emerged, looking at him intently. He could see the gleam of the little creature’s eyes in the faint starlight. He heard his own heart pounding. Suddenly he remembered the goatherd’s warning before he came to Avalon:
The Joyful Island, Avalon
Lies on a lake of tears;
The blissful lovebird, Estamon
Nests in a forest of fears.
And he remembered the moonbirds’ song by the pond under the Blue Moon. ‘Still, I am not going in there!’ he whispered fiercely. But the anklebiter growled and whined so loudly he decided he must try. Shutting his eyes, he brushed past the horrible curtain, and found himself at a dead end, and was about to turn and flee. But C
hiseller was busy, digging as if his life depended on it. ‘You know I really want to get in there, don’t you?’ said Calibur. The anklebiter ignored him and kept furiously digging. Calibur took a knife from his bundle and began to help.
All that night they tunnelled side by side, and for a while fear was forgotten. Every now and then Chiseller would back up with the spoil, and deposit it outside. He seemed tireless, while Calibur felt his energy ebb. Strange thoughts came into his mind as he dug, of graves and being buried alive, or going on and on until he came to a strange world of perpetual dark, where zombies wandered, neither dead nor alive. He was very thirsty, and his head began to pound. Finally he slumped down in the tunnel and said, ‘I can’t go on.’ But Chiseller nipped at his boots, and growled in his high-pitched way that made Calibur laugh in spite of himself. So he continued digging.
Finally there came a gleam of light in the furthest pocket of the tunnel where Chiseller dug, and his black nose covered in sand sniffed the fresh air excitedly. They both resumed at a furious rate until there was a big enough hole for Calibur to put his head and shoulders through, after he had managed to push Chiseller back. There was the compound, with the dreary little huts of wattle and daub and the longer meeting-house, all mud-grey in the pale light before dawn. It was now the third day of the festival of the Void, and Calibur tried not to think about the ritual of death which was to come.
He turned to the anklebiter and said, ‘Now it is up to me, little fellow. You wait here.’ He took the icon out of his bundle and wriggled out of the hole. But the anklebiter growled so loudly that he had to let it come. Together they crept towards the huts, peering in each in turn, looking for Rosa.
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