Where did it come from? He tried to remember, tried to think. He felt as if snow was falling inside his head, blanketing his memory in soft, obscuring drifts. He retraced his last few minutes before he blacked out. Remembering in reverse sequence, he crawled backwards along the secret path, across the courtyard, down the ramp leading into the basement below the tower, through the filth and darkness, returning to the cage and the secret campervan. And then he remembered: the empty vehicle; the agony as the ligaments in his ankle tore themselves apart; the silver jewellery box that was supposed to contain a letter from Stasia’s starets, but upon opening yielded a photograph of Wolfgang Bludkraft. He blinked and sat up, letting the shard of glass fall through his fingers down the side of the bed against the wall. He gasped as he remembered the row of red silk ninja outfits in the closet of his old apartment.
Stasia was the High Hierophant.
Or Hierophantess—he was unclear on the terminology. But she was the leader of the SSS, and she was after the Priest’s Soul. She had tricked Danyl into invading Campbell’s tower and stealing back the box, which contained clues to the Priest’s Soul’s secret hiding place. He must not let that box fall into her hands! Although—he checked his jacket pockets and patted down the bedclothes—the jewellery box was in his robe, which he’d just delivered into her hands. Which was disappointing.
Footsteps in the hall, light and quick. He lay back and closed his eyes; the door opened and Stasia entered. ‘Robe is gone. I throw in rubbish.’
Danyl pretended to wake. He stretched and yawned. Don’t let her suspect you know anything. He said, ‘Thanks.’ They smiled at each other for a second, and then he said, ‘Well, goodbye.’
‘Goodbye?’
‘I have to go. I have a breakfast meeting.’
‘But you cannot walk.’
‘That’s true. Can I borrow some more crutches?’
‘The Campbell Walker will have men watching for you all over the valley. You are only safe here. You must stay. Rest. Heal.’
‘That sounds great, but I really—’ Danyl slipped down from the bed, his leg collapsed under him, he clutched onto the sheets and slid halfway to the floor. Stasia folded her arms and watched as he dragged himself back up, clenching his teeth and whimpering with pain.
She said, ‘I am thinking I understand. There is no breakfast meeting. You are afraid.’
‘Me? Afraid? Ha, why I—’
‘Silence. You discover many things in the tower of the Campbell Walker. Secrets. Secrets about me, that make you confuse and frighten. What did you see?’
Danyl considered the question. How much should he reveal? He decided to trust his instincts. Reveal nothing. ‘What do you think I saw?’
‘I think you look inside box. You see that there is no letter from starets. Instead you find a photograph and an old message. You think I have trick you.’
‘Haven’t you?’
‘Sometimes,’ Stasia replied, ‘when we know part of a secret we know less than when we knew nothing.’
‘What?’
She sat beside him on the bed and placed her warm, smooth hand on his bare leg. ‘There must be no more secret between us. No more mystery. I will tell you my story of why I come to Aro Valley and what I must do here. You will have the answers you seek. But first I must tell you of more my grandmother and her family. This story begins with a story.’ She paused for dramatic effect. ‘And that story . . .’ Another pause. ‘Begins with a priest.’ Danyl twitched at the word ‘priest’. She nodded. ‘It is a very old story. Listen and you will see just how old.’ She eased him back onto the bed and began to speak.
The priest lived among the people He delivered their children. He healed them when they were sick, or injured, and when they died he laid them out and buried them. He was strong and clever, and feared only one thing: death, which comes to all men.
The people urged the priest to set aside his fear, that to live was to die, and that from this there was no escape. But the priest was cunning and he knew many secrets. During the day, while the people hunted and fished and worked in the fields, the priest sat in his great house and brooded and dreamed.
Then, one night while his tribe slept, he fashioned a box, using all of his craft and skill, and when he was finished he drew his soul forth from his body and placed it inside the box, which he then concealed so cunningly it could never be found.
Now, so long as the box containing his soul was safe, the priest would never die. But without his soul he became savage and cruel. Instead of living among the people as one of them, he ruled over them. He commanded them to build him a great tower, and they obeyed. He took their daughters as his wives, and they could not refuse. Over the years the priest’s body became deformed with age, so he went about in a black robe to hide his evil nature. The people called him Koschei, which means skeleton, and they cursed him and longed to be free of his terrible rule. But so long as his soul remained hidden they would never be rid of him, and so many ages passed until the people could not remember a time when they were not enslaved by Koschei the Deathless.
Then, one springtime, Koschei took a new girl from the village to be his wife. He chose her for her beauty, but this girl was also quick-witted and sly. She flattered Koschei with sweet words, and charmed him, and then she begged him to tell her where he had hidden his soul, as proof of his love for her.
‘Very well,’ Koschei replied. ‘To prove my love I will tell you my secret. Beneath my tower is a lightless chamber and in the chamber sits a carriage, and my soul is safe inside it. If anyone damages this carriage then I will die.’
That night while Koschei slept, the girl took up a club from the wood by the hearth, and crept to the lightless chamber at the base of the tower, where she smashed open the windows of the carriage. But when she returned to his bedroom, Koschei was not harmed.
The girl raged at him, ‘I knew that you were lying so I smashed open the carriage to prove it. You do not love me.’
Koschei laughed and replied, ‘I do love you and I will prove it. In the forest nearby there is a clearing, and in the clearing there is a well. My soul is hidden in the pool at the bottom of the well, and if someone disturbs the surface of the water therein then I will die. There, you see how much I love you?’
Unknown to Koschei the girl had a young lover in the village, and she conspired with him to bring about the priest’s death. This lover found the clearing in the forest, ventured into the depths of the well and broke the surface of the black water, so he was sure Koschei must have died. But still Koschei lived.
His young wife confronted him again and said, ‘I know you lied about the well. Once again you prove you do not love me.’ She locked herself in her rooms and would not speak to Koschei. And so great was his love for this girl, the deathless priest finally revealed the true location of his soul.
‘There is a faraway island,’ he told her, speaking through the keyhole in the door. ‘On the island is a deep valley and in the valley is a strong house, and inside the house is a room with no doors. Inside this room is a box made of gold, and inside the box is my soul. If anyone opens this box then I will die.’
So the girl sent her lover on a long journey. After enduring many hardships he reached the island and located the valley. He entered the house and stood inside the room with no doors, where he found the golden box. As soon as he laid his hands on it Koschei knew he’d been betrayed. He took up his sword, ready to strike down his deceitful wife—but at that moment her lover opened the box and Koschei was struck dead. The girl and the people were finally free.
Danyl thought about this story. He said, ‘It’s hard to understand why Koschei told the girl where his soul was hidden after she repeatedly tried to kill him.’
‘Yes.’ Stasia squeezed his leg. ‘You are very perceptive. This is version of story told to children. Real story has different ending.’
‘What happens?’
‘I will tell, and you will understand the full truth. But first I speak again of my grandmother. I have told you of her early life, growing up in small hut in woods near our village, and of the foreigner who lived with them—the mysterious Austrian who healed her leg when she stepped in bear trap, and fled from angry mob after saving life of farmer. You remember this?’
‘Vaguely.’
~
‘So. After some weeks pass my family receive message from foreigner. He is living in the village, in hiding, moving from house to house, and living sometimes with the doctor, helping him tend to his patients. Because these were bad times in my old country. The year was 1914. Russia suffered under the yoke of the Tsars. Revolution and warfare were in the wind. Disease swept the country, and many strange people travelled the land. One evening, coming back from market, my grandmother and great-grandparents found an old man lying in ditch by side of road. He’d taken sick and his companions abandoned him for fear of contagion, and once he was alone he was set upon and robbed. He had deep cuts in his hands, so they carried him to the doctor’s house, which was where the Austrian was sheltering that night. The doctor lay the man down on a blanket before the fire and tended to his wounds, and gave him medicine for his fever. The sick, wounded man was very grateful to my grandmother and great-grandparents, and to the doctor, but as he spoke his eyes returned to the Austrian, who sat in the darkness in corner of the doctor’s living room. At length he said, ‘You have my thanks, new friends, as does the good doctor. But do me one more favour. Introduce me to this man in the corner, who watches us but does not speak.’
‘He is just a traveller,’ replied my great-grandfather.
‘Travelling to where?’
Then the Austrian spoke up. ‘I am going nowhere,’ he said. ‘Or, rather, I am going away from something.’ As he said this he rested his hand on the box wrapped in oilskin that he carried with him at all times.
The sick man, who was more than he seemed, looked closely at the Austrian and the box, and he said, ‘Let me tell you all a story.’
Then he told them the story of Koschei the Deathless, just as I have told it to you—until he reached the end of the tale. In this version of the story, Koschei tricked the young girl and her lover. The lover journeyed to the island and found the valley, and entered the house and stood inside the room with no doors—but when he opened the gold box, the soul of Koschei the Deathless passed into his body and possessed him.
Koschei’s body died, and the people rejoiced and thought that they were free, and they set the girl and her lover to rule over them in his stead. And, in time, the girl grew old and died, but the body of her lover endured, although it became withered and skeletal, and although he was a cruel and terrible ruler the people told themselves, ‘At least he is not so wicked as Koschei the Deathless.’
When the sick man finished his tale the Austrian replied, ‘I have heard many stories like this. In Germany they tell the fable of a cannibal named Body with no Soul, who could not die because his soul was hidden inside a box on an island in the Red Sea. The Hindus have a legend of an evil fakir called Punchkin who could not be killed because he kept his soul inside a parrot that he hid in a jungle in a distant land, and the parrot was locked in a cage inside a circle of palm trees and protected by a thousand genies. In northern Europe they tell a story of the giant who cut out his heart, and when I lived in Cairo I learned Arabic and read A Thousand and One Nights, in which Scheherazade tells the tale of a djinn who hides his soul inside a sparrow, which he keeps in a box at the bottom of the ocean.
‘It is a strange thing, is it not,’ the Austrian continued, his hand still draped over the box, ‘that all over the world people tell this same myth in which a powerful, evil sorcerer removes his soul from his body and conceals it in an object, and so long as this artefact is safe, he cannot be killed. Why do storytellers cherish this myth?’
‘Because it is a metaphor,’ the sick man said, his eyes on the Austrian and his box. ‘This story conceals an historic truth about humanity. Long ago, in the days before we separated into different peoples and different nations, we lived as one tribe in a hot, dry land far to the south. At this time our ancestors were ruled by a caste of priests. These priests were clever but very cruel, and they possessed a secret power, some magic or technology now lost to us, that extended their lives. So long as they possessed this power they could not be overthrown, and it was the lot of the people to suffer under the priests until the end of days. There was never any change—nothing new could ever be created, for the priests saw all innovation as a threat to their rule. So every day was like the last, and no matter how many times the people rose up, the priests subjugated them. And so it went on for countless generations, and all our thousands of years of recorded history unto this day is a mere flicker of time, an instant of light after the long, terrible darkness of these priests.’
Now my grandmother spoke up. She asked, ‘What happened to the priests?’
The sick man replied, ‘I do not know, child. The stories all end differently. In some tales they were destroyed; in others their souls remain intact and they endure, hidden, patient and malevolent, waiting for their return. And in others still they yet rule us but we are too blind to see them. And who can say which of these stories are true and which are merely tales for children?’
The Austrian’s eyes glittered. He said, ‘Whether the stories are true or not, the days of the priests are long gone—if, indeed, they ever were—and the tales about them are so old and confused they are corrupted beyond all meaning. But why tell these tales at all? Why tonight? Why did you treat us to the story of Koschei the Deathless?’
The sick man replied, ‘Because of that.’ He pointed his hand, which was bound in bandages soaked in blood, at the box beside the Austrian, at a place where the oilskin wrapping was torn at the corner and a portion of the box beneath it was visible. It was fashioned from black wood and covered with carvings.
‘I am old,’ the sick man said. ‘And I have travelled far, from the steppes to the west to the eastern marches, across the frozen tundra to the north to the southern deserts, and I have seen many things. I have learned that the priests we speak of were real, and I have seen artefacts dating from the time of their rule: a statue in a monastery at Optina, fragments of a tablet worshipped by nomadic tribes near the Arctic circle. And I recognise the carvings on that box at your side. It is a relic of the priests, dating back to the very dawn of our species, and it is an object of great evil and terrible power.’
The Austrian chuckled, amused by the depth and passion of the sick man’s words. He replied, ‘I see by the crucifix you wear around your neck that you are a man of faith, and so you see the world in terms of supernatural forces. Immortal priests. Powerful relics. Good and evil. But that is not the way of things. The contents of this box are powerful, yes. But it contains information. It is what it is, and that is neither virtuous not malign.’
‘It is evil,’ the sick man insisted. ‘It must be destroyed.’
‘If it was evil,’ asked the Austrian, ‘could I do this?’ And then he strode across the room and seized the sick man’s wounded hand, and the sick man cried out in pain and lost consciousness.
My great-grandparents listened to this exchange with increasing alarm, and when the Austrian used his power to heal the sick man’s hand, their fears grew. They searched the sick man’s pockets while he slept, seeking clues to his identity, and when they found papers revealing him to be a government agent they became sick with worry. What would this man do when he awoke? Were the police and the army searching for him? The doctor said, ‘We have terrible choices ahead of us.’ And my great-grandfather nodded sadly, and bade my grandmother return home. ‘You cannot be here,’ he said, kissing her forehead. ‘Go home and go to sleep, and we will see you in the morning.’
It was high summer. My grandmother walked home, and the sun s
et, lingering just below the horizon, and then rose again by the time she reached her house in the clearing. She lay in bed the rest of that night and through the morning, while sunlight poured through gaps in curtains, but her parents did not return.
So she rose, dressed and ran back through the woods and the fields to the house of the doctor at the far end of the valley, and arrived to find it a smoking ruin. Men from the village were dousing the last of the flames and pulling bodies from the wreckage. They found my great-grandparents, clinging to each other in death, the doctor, dead from smoke inhalation, and the body of the sick man, his head smashed by a fallen beam but his hands unbandaged and unharmed. But of the mysterious Austrian and his box there was no sign.
My grandmother was eight years old. She was sent to live with relatives who lived nearby, but then war broke out, followed by more epidemics. One by one the people caring for my grandmother went off to war, or died, until one day she was alone, and she returned to her parents’ home in the woods and lived there alone for many, many years.
Time passed. The tsars fell, and Russia came under the yoke of the cruel priests of Lenin and Marx. My grandmother grew up, she became an artist like her parents; she still possessed the gift of healing, but she never used it because of the terrible suffering she knew the gift could bring.
Eventually she married and had a child—a daughter—and went to live in the nearby city where her husband could find work. But my grandmother could not bear living among so many people. She could not sleep, could not paint, and after years of pent-up misery she abandoned her husband and her child, and returned to her clearing. Her parents’ old home had fallen into ruin so she bought a caravan and slept inside it, grew her own vegetables and bathed in a stream, and lost herself in her paintings and forgot about the outside world.
Then, one day, a woman came to the clearing carrying a baby girl wrapped up in blankets. This woman was her daughter and the baby was her granddaughter. Me.
Unspeakable Secrets of the Aro Valley Page 30